


six times james and lily didn't kiss in the rain

by bringyouhometoo



Category: Kissing in the Rain (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1530218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/pseuds/bringyouhometoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"James sits beside her, drumming his fingers impatiently against his knees. Lily doesn’t know what it is about emotionally-charged scenes that makes their aftermath always so horrifically awkward, but she finds she can’t quite look him in the eye."</p><p>Missing moments from every project James and Lily work together on, and the times in-between.; This much is true: they work together, they act together, they kiss, they often find themselves in the rain. Take that away, and what's left? The Secretly Banging The Whole Time AU, because every fandom needs one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. surfin' the sun as it starts to rise

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time coming - I wanted to write something for the fandom from day one, but I always struggle writing for a story while it’s still going on, partly for fear of things getting devalued or made impossible by a later episode. So! Now that all seven episodes are out! I present to you my fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during the filming of the Episode 1 project. 2762 words, because apparently I lack all self-restraint.
> 
> RATED T. Some mature allusions and mild cursing but nothing at all graphic.

It has been raining for six hours straight, and Lily can practically _feel_ the director’s composure crumbling by the second. They’re supposed to be filming one of the last scenes in the movie – Lily-the-character is outside, taking down some washing late at night, looks up and sees the Big Bad coming round the corner. It’s dramatic, it’s windswept (they’ve brought in a wind machine and everything), it’s going to look really cool and the Big Bad will _hopefully_ look a lot more…well, _bad_ once post-production get their hands on the footage, except… Except they only have this location for another hour or two, three at a _push_ before it starts getting light out. And it’s still raining. And the director, for some _unfathomable_ reason, has decided that It Can’t Be Raining In This Scene.

So they’re waiting.

Lily is wrapped in a fleece blanket, staring at the rain from under one of the barely-holding-up gazebos they set up around the food tables; she hasn’t moved for a good hour, even though the smell of the cakes and doughnuts is enough to make her stomach growl in frustrated hunger, even though she’s getting a crick in her neck, even though the rainwater has started seeping into her boots.

“Go _inside,_ Lily,” the intern tells her, in what is probably supposed to be a warm tone but just comes across as condescending (although that might just be the British accent – honestly, poor girl, first job out in LA and she lands _six hours of rain)_. “You’ll catch your death, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting going any time soon.”

Lily shrugs noncommittally, glancing up at the cottage - half-hidden by the sheets of rain – that they’ve been shooting around of for three consecutive and, as the director won’t let _anyone_ forget, very expensive nights. Dimly, through one of the old panelled windows, she can see him. Pacing. He’s been pacing for upwards of twenty minutes, his cell clutched to his cheek, his free hand gesturing erratically – sometimes he’ll stop mid-pace to punctuate a particularly _emphatic_ gesture, but before long the pacing resumes.

She’s not going in there –into the tiny, over-heated sitting room to sit on a couch and listen to her co-star yelling at someone or, worse yet, into the adjoining bedroom where they’ve been falling in love with each other for three nights now, where the walls are thin enough that she’d still be subjected to his _endless_ diatribe – honestly, Lily feels a little sorry for whoever it is he’s talking to.

“I’m fine,” she tells the still-hovering intern, and manages a tired smile. “It’s good to get…some fresh air.”

“Right,” the intern – _Anna,_ Lily thinks, her name was Anna – nods, raising her eyebrows; Lily stares back, as blandly as she can. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

*

James comes storming out quite soon after that – his face is a mask of righteous anger (coupled with, Lily thinks, not a little bit of _self-righteousness_ ), and he collapses into his chair with an exhausted sort of huff.

There is a horrendous, _sharp_ kind of silence – Lily thinks she can feel something in the air shift, become angled and jarring. They sit there like that for a full minute; she knows because she counts the seconds back from sixty, focusing on breathing in and out on every multiple of five.

James still hasn’t said a word; he’s glaring at a puddle forming around the edges of the gazebo, like it’s personally responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened to him. Lily notices idly that his hands are knotted tightly together in his lap, the knuckles bright white.

Finally – with the silence growing louder by the second in Lily’s ears – she turns her head to look properly at him. “Wanna talk about it?”

James doesn’t look at her; barely moves his lips to speak. “No.”

Lily tilts her head slightly, staring at him; there’s a flush to his neck and cheeks, and his lips are pressed tightly together. “Well,” she says slowly, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. It’s four in the morning; everyone’s a little tightly-wound. “ _Obviously_ you do.”

He snaps his head around to stare at her. Lily thinks she can see the beginnings of a smile curl the corners of his mouth – and then he’s scowling. “Obviously?” James asks her, his voice rising slightly; Lily can feel a few techies’ eyes on them. “What do you know?”

“Okay, okay,” Lily snaps back, and yeah, she’s rolling her eyes now. “Sorry I asked. _Jesus_.”

They resume a prickly, impatient silence; Lily squints at the sky, and begins to think she can see it clearing up, although that might just be wishful thinking.

“It was a break-up,” James offers suddenly, completely unprompted. Lily keeps her eyes firmly trained on the night sky. Yeah, she can just make out a few stars around the edges of the clouds, she’s sure of it – but she can also see the horizon starting to lighten up, which means their timescale now is _impossibly tight._

“Sorry,” she says quietly, when it becomes clear that James is waiting for her to speak.

“Not your fault,” he says, and she bites back a smile. “It – was a long time coming. College girlfriend, you know. We should have broken up when I moved out here.”

“Still sucks, though,” Lily says, and she feels some of the jaggedness go out of the air between them. James is looking at her, she can see him out of the corner of her eye, and she thinks either one of them might be about to say something more, when –

The rain stops, as suddenly as it arrived.

*

Suddenly everyone is bursting into activity – the lights are being rigged, the boom is being checked, Lily is given the fastest make-up touch up and continuity check in the history of independent cinema, and then James is back inside the cottage and she’s got a laundry basket in her arms.

Taking down the sheets calms her; there’s something about clean laundry, no matter how much it might smell of the rainwater that’s been pouring down for the past seven hours, that just feels _fresh_ to Lily. She folds each piece methodically, smoothing it down and giving it a critical once-over for bugs or strands of grass before placing it in the basket, humming as she works, something upbeat and vaguely seventies, she thinks she might have picked it up from one of James’s endless _character-building playlists._

The snap of a twig prompts her to look up – and for a moment, real fear washes over Lily, ice-cold terror that goes straight to her gut, even though the face behind the CG-friendly dots of paint is unmistakeably her co-star Mickey who always belches after drinking a cup of coffee – and she stumbles backwards almost on instinct.

“ _James-_ “ she hardly gets her line out, has to gulp down a sob, starts again. “James-“

The cottage’s window slams open, and she can hear a sharp intake of breath. “Get inside get inside get inside –“ She runs, dropping the laundry, and slams the door shut behind her. James has jumped out over the windowsill, face set and determined, and she can hear the tremor in his voice. “Lily, it’s him _, get Harry, run –_ “

“Your _wand!”_

“And cut,” the director calls, sounding relieved. “Excellent work, thank you guys, let’s check the lights and go again, then maybe we can all get some sleep…”

Lily breathes out slowly, and touches two fingers to her cheek; they come away wet. She counts to ten and then back to zero before going outside and facing the retributions; she’s wasted another two precious minutes by crying off her mascara, and _everyone_ is as tired as she feels.

James sits beside her, drumming his fingers impatiently against his knees. Lily doesn’t know what it is about emotionally-charged scenes that makes their aftermath always so horrifically _awkward,_ but she finds she can’t quite look him in the eye. The make-up girl taps her gently on the chin when she’s done, and tells her not to cry it _all_ off again. And then they go for a second take.

*

The sun is well and truly rising when they’re let go; Lily spends longer than usual in her trailer (really just a glorified port-a-potty) and attempts to wash an entire night’s worth of grime and make-up off her skin, so by the time she’s actually ready to leave the sky is blue, the daylight is bright, and the birds are chirping in that manic, it-just-actually-rained-in-California-oh-my-god kind of way that always sets her teeth on edge.

James is leaning against the hood of his car, head bent low over his phone, reading some long text message.

And she doesn’t know what compels her to do it; only suddenly Lily finds herself taking a few steps towards him, suddenly she’s reaching out and plucking the phone from his hands.

“Whatever it is,” she tells him quickly, before he can say a word. “Good or bad. You can deal with it when you’ve slept. Okay?”

He’s staring at her, his face too bright in the morning sun. Lily shrugs, smiles a little. Then he blinks, slowly – and when he opens his eyes again, there’s something different (or, maybe, actually, really _familiar_ , but) in the way he’s looking at her.

“Come on,” Lily says, eyes flitting away – suddenly she feels warm, like her cheeks are burning up. “I need coffee.”

*

It turns out nowhere is actually _open_ yet, so they go back to James’s trailer – if only because it’s fractionally larger than Lily’s – and she perches on the windowsill while he fiddles around with his espresso machine.

“Can’t believe you have an _espresso machine,_ ” she says, mostly to fill the silence; she has a feeling that if they stop talking for longer than a few seconds, at any moment the absurdity of the situation will catch up with them, all-nighter or no.

“What’s wrong with espresso?” James counters, turning around with two tiny cups filled to the brim – the smell of caffeine is enough to make Lily feel slightly light-headed. “It’s a classic.”

“It’s pretentious,” she tells him, taking a sip and pulling a face. “ _Ugh,_ got any milk?”

“Just soy.”

“Fine, _anything,_ god, that’s gross.”

James hands her the bottle, smiling when she fills her cup too far and has to quickly duck her head to catch a few drops of cream-coloured coffee. “Better?”

“ _A little,_ ” she tells him waspishly. “You can’t tell me you enjoy drinking this, Porter. It’s an act, with your gramophone and your _soy milk_ and your _stupid shirt_ and your _espresso._ ”

“Wow. Sensing a lot of rage there.”

“It’s _pretentious,_ and totally fake, everyone can see right through it.”

“I’m allergic to dairy. Think that’s fake, too?”

“No, but –“

“The gramophone belonged to my father. This shirt?” James plucks at the t-shirt Lily had pointed at, and smiles a little. “First band I saw live.”

“Okay, so you like the music, but _why the shirt,_ it’s so – “

“ _Don’t_ say hipster,” James snorts. “Like you actually need glasses.”

Lily takes another sip of coffee, and doesn’t deign to answer. James continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “We went to Europe when I was twelve,” he tells her. “Last vacation with mom and dad. They fought for most of it, but…there was this one really great in Florence, and we had coffee. I was allowed to have an espresso, like the adults, I guess it stuck. I like it, always have.”

Lily doesn’t quite know how to respond; she can feel the seconds dragging by, except the silence no longer fills awkward, it’s – round, somehow, like they’re both holding their breath. She finishes her coffee in one gulp, and sets the cup down with a quiet slam. James is playing with his shirt, it’s obviously a habit, the hem is all frayed in that one particular spot, and when he looks up there’s a question hiding behind the way his eyes widen as they meet hers.

She leans across the crowded space and kisses him, the sunlight warming the back of her neck when he pulls her closer.

*

Getting to his apartment is a blur; he insists on keeping his eyes on the road, though she catches him smiling when her hand creeps dangerously high up his leg, when she yawns and stretches her arms to tousle the hair at the back of his neck, when she applies a fresh coat of lip gloss, squinting into the rear-view mirror. Then he’s pulling into an unfamiliar driveway, and dimly Lily is aware of a group of kids waiting for a bus halfway down the block – if she were any more lucid she would feel ashamed of the way she presses James up against his porch, her lips opening against his, hungry, urgent.

*

It’s noon when Lily leaves. The walk home, through alien neighbourhoods and uncomfortably crowded landmarks, saps away the last of her energy; she doesn’t even shower when she gets to her apartment, just lies down fully-dressed in her bed and falls asleep.

She has a few days off from shooting _Wait for It_ then, while they shoot with some of the child actors, and the break couldn’t have come at a more opportune time; she volunteers for two extra shifts at Starbucks, and after three days solid of smiling politely and concentrating hard on not messing up any orders, she no longer winces every time someone asks for an espresso.

On the evening of the third day, James turns up.

Lily’s presenting orders, so she calls out his name before she sees him – and when he walks up to her counter, she impresses everyone (mostly herself) by keeping a straight face. “There you go, sir, one soy latte to go, have a nice -”

“Can we talk?”

“- Day.”

James takes the cup, and nods over to a table by the windows. “I’ll just wait -”

“No,” Lily cuts him off, quietly forceful. “ _No,_ I don’t finish for another hour anyway, um, anything you want say to me you can say at work –“

“I didn’t want it to be weird –“

“What, and _this isn’t_?”

James is silent at that one; Lily bites back a triumphant smirk, knowing that she’s scored a point.

“Okay,” he says slowly, eyes fixed on his paper cup, the tips of his ears slightly pink. “It was stupid, yeah? Weird…all-nighter energy. I was – emotionally not really -- functioning _,_ and…”

Lily snorts, hearing the insult behind the vaguely-expressed sentiment, and James falls silent.

Thank god there isn’t a line, for once; otherwise Lily would already have had to leave, and this conversation would have been _rescheduled,_ and they’d have to do this entire dance all over again.

“Totally what I was thinking,” she says, brittle. “Sorry I didn’t call, or - or whatever. It’s – we work together. I don’t even _like_ you, _god –_ “

“Thanks,” James nods, raising an eyebrow; Lily flushes.

“Shut up,” she says, quieter still; her supervisor is watching them, and she knows she has less than a minute to get him out of here or there’ll be trouble. “Was that everything?”

“Guess so,” he shrugs, taking a sip of coffee. “So. A one-off, we were both really tired, and it’s not going to be awkward at work tomorrow?”

“Glad you get the picture,” Lily tells him, half-turning her back to re-stock the napkin dispenser. “Are we done?”

“We’re done,” James nods, and then – finally, _finally –_ he’s leaving.

Lily doesn’t look up until the door is swinging shut behind him; and then only to _glare_ at his retreating back, anyway, he’s in that denim jacket that looks like it should be a _costume_ piece again even though he must be sweating like crazy it’s so hot out.

She vows then and there not to ask the jacket, because he’ll just have some stupid, emotional story about how it was passed down through the generations and was probably worn by his great-aunt Lucy on the day she got engaged, and she _doesn’t want to know._ They don’t _like_ each other; that much has been established; and if she doesn’t like him, then she doesn’t need to know about his life, his coffee habits, the reason for his shirts.

It’s all a question of focus. Today, it’s coffee; tomorrow, the kiss scene, and then there’ll only be another week of shooting. They’ll part ways amicably enough, and everything else….will have just been a blip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two, you guys. I feel too many things about them. About their whole growing dynamic and their explosive fights and their kissing scenes and the awfully hilarious awkwardness that ensues. And episode 7 was a joy. But I am also sucker for the “they were totally Doing It the whole time” trope so, um…This is…that.
> 
> I may have disqualified myself from canonisation — I tried very, very hard to make it fit into the gaps left in canon, both in-show and fan-created, but obviously the credibility there is stretched slightly. ANYWAY expect the next few parts as soon as possible, I’m trying to get to episode 6 just before Yulin’s drabble for 7 gets posted on Monday. Finals? Hahahahaha what finals just let me write fanfiction bye.


	2. not tired enough to sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during the filming for the Episode 2 project.
> 
> RATED T for some mature-ish content and cursing. A little more than in chapter one, but nothing approaching actual smut. Don't say I didn't warn you.
> 
> 3848 words. This chapters got away from me.

They day they film Anne and Gilbert’s first kiss is swelteringly hot. Lily can feel the sweat running down the back of her dress, can feel her legs sticking to the damp grass, can _practically_ feel her hair frizzing out of the carefully-perfected flowery style with every minute that passes. The rain machines should, in theory, help;  but all the sheets of barely-cool water do is add a gross level of humidity to the process.

It’s been six months since they wrapped _Wait for It._ Six months, two trailers, six BuzzFeed posts about the new and exciting adaptation of a timeless classic, and one disastrous publicity date later – and here they are. Kissing in the rain.

It’s harder, much harder, to play Anne opposite James-as-Gilbert than Lily had been banking on; Anne is so close to her, and fictional Gilbert might just have been her first fictional crush, but it’s _James,_ and every time the director calls “Cut!” there they are, avoiding making eye contact. At least their dynamic in _I Can’t Wait_ had some fire to it, something slightly jagged, something to fit the way they are around each other – two asteroids on opposing orbits,  forever colliding and sparking away again. This _friendship,_ before anything else, this quiet, blushing affection – it’s unlike anything even _approaching_ reality.

Still. Lily is nothing if not a professional. She avoids James when she can, more out of politeness than anything else; and as soon as the cameras are rolling she can forget, if only for a few minutes, everything around them. They _do_ work well together – there is _some_ truth in all those articles hailing their on-screen chemistry, the way they respond to each other. It’s only when the cameras stop rolling and the characters fall away that Lily can feel her skin begin to itch with agitated frustration.

The thing is. The thing _is,_ they’ve barely talked since… Since whatever that was, since that blip, those few hours of momentary insanity. Which is _fine._ It’s more than fine, it’s what Lily _wants_ , except, except –

Except James keeps _small-talking._ Asking her about her day, her plans for the weekend, her favourite place to get take-out. Always with that innocent, bumbling tone, the puppy-dog eyes, the shuffling feet and awkwardly endearing stooped posture, like he’s deliberately trying to appear less tall around her. She ignores him when she can, gives monosyllabic answers if she must –but it’s exhausting, this constant barrage of inane _niceties._

So she snaps. Tells him, flat-out: “Please don’t talk to me.”

A prickly silence follows, and for a moment Lily is tempted to turn back to him, to tell him about the  new Vampire Weekend album – but he’s reading now, and when he mutters, half-under his breath, “Yeah, can you get her a mint,” -  well. Her good intentions are gone before she can put them into practise.

*

It’s almost strange,  how from one day to the next they can go from awkwardly courteous co-stars to frank, open _dislike._

 Although, Lily thinks the potential was always there – there’s a combustive energy that crackles between them, always has been, and really it should be surprising that it took this long to ignite. They’re just too _different;_ he’s earnest to the point of insincerity, and he likes old-timey records and weird, disgusting coffee, and he probably has some deep unreconstructed notions of _gentlemanly_ behaviour hiding behind all that liberal crap. He’s _nice_ in every way that Lily simply isn’t, with her sharp words and abrasive attitude and quick temper, her refusal to forgo convenience for the sake of boycotting the corporations, her mistrust of anyone who describes their style of a mix of high street and vintage ( _That’s just_ _old stuff and cheap stuff,_ she’s told Pam over countless mojitos. _That’s what everyone does)._

It’s little things at first. Lily taking a sort of vindictive pleasure in finishing the soy milk before James reaches the coffee table. James waiting for her to round the corner, and then letting the elevator doors slide shut as she watches, fuming.  Rehearsals filled with terse silences, him rolling his eyes when she needs a touch up before they can go for another take, her snorting when she catches him trying to chat up the third AD.

James actually turns around then, raising both eyebrows. “What?”

It’s the first thing he’s _said_ to her in a good three days. Lily blanches, shrugging slightly, disguising her uneasiness with a grimace. “Gross,” she says slowly, taking a few steps forward and placing herself protectively between James and a gaping Jenny. “She’s, like, twelve.”

“I’m twenty-two, actually,” Jenny offers somewhat timidly;  neither James or Lily notice her.

“That’s…” James takes a deep breath, like he’s actually trying to regain some composure. “None of your business.”

Lily laughs harshly. “It’s unprofessional _,_ ” she tells his viciously. “Not to mention _cheap._ Two minutes of fame and you think you’re the next – next –“

“Next?”

She shrugs it off, wincing internally. The next _Burton,_ she’d wanted to say. But James is not Richard and she…she is not Liz. “The next big shot in town,” she mumbles, knowing how weak it sounds even as the words leave her mouth. James barks out a short, humourless laugh.

“I really didn’t mind,” Jenny says into the silence; when neither of them turn around, she shuffles off, looking mortified.

“Great,” James says flatly. “Thanks.”

“You’re _super_ welcome,” Lily forces out with a smile, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Now can we please get back to work?”

“Right, because everyone’s waiting for _me,_ ” James snorts. “They’re changing a lens, _god_ , did you even listen?”

Lily flushes, but holds her ground. “The sooner we’re back in position _,”_ she says, nodding back towards the hillside they’ve been filming on all morning.  “The sooner we can go again as soon as they’ve _changed the lens_.”

She doesn’t wait for James to answer; simply pushes past him and walks off, forcing down the instinct that tells her James is watching her go.  But then -

“Why do you care so much?”

She stops dead, refusing to turn around. “Care?”

She hears him laugh humourlessly. “About me getting a date.”

_Shit._

She turns around slowly, seething; and James is smirking at her. God, he’s _smirking at her,_ like he’s somehow tricked her into admitting something – something so patently _not true_ that she can’t even formulate a proper response. “That’s not _true,_ ” she says, half-whining the last word; James’s smirk, impossibly, widens. “God. Egotistical as well as a jerk.”

“I think you’re jealous,” James says slowly, quietly, his eyes narrowing slightly; Lily gapes at him. “I never asked you out again, and now you’re jealous.”

“You never – _god,_ ” Lily fumes, hardly managing to form a sentence. “I never asked _you_ out again _either._ We didn’t – it wasn’t even a _date,_ you know that, right? My _publicist_ set us up, and it was the _worst_ date I’ve ever been on , so no, actually, I’m not jealous, I was looking out for that _kid_.”

“You keep saying that,” James grins, and Lily balls her hand into a fist to stop herself from reaching out and shoving him backwards. “It’s starting to sound almost convincing.”

Then he’s turning around and sauntering off, having decidedly had the last word.

“ _Asshole,_ ” Lily half-shouts, drawing a few curious stares; and then she snaps, and hurries after him, determined not to let him just _walk out_ on her like that.

*

She catches up with him out in the parking lot, the deserted tarmac baking in the heat – her little red Toyota is roasting in the midday sun, god, driving home’s going to be _fun._

“Hey,” Lily shouts, louder now that there’s no one around “ _Porter_.”

He stops, but doesn’t turn around; leaves it to her to grab his wrist and pull him around to face her. She glares up at him, her heart thudding sickeningly in her chest, her stomach muscles taut.

“What?” James asks her then, infuriatingly cool and collected. “Did you want something?”

“I want you to stop being such a _jerk_ ,” she spits out, her fingers digging into his skin – she sees him wince, and feels a stab of vindictive pride.  “I want you to stop pretending to be this dumb nice guy all the time, you’re not _nice,_ so just drop the act and we can finish the job and I won’t have to deal with – all this – _ugh._ ”

James raises an eyebrow. “So let me get this straight,” he says slowly, raising one hand and tipping his fingers under Lily’s chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You want me to _drop the nice guy act_. And you want me to _stop being such a jerk_. I’m…seeing a problem there.”

“Shut up,” Lily says, in a low kind of growl that – _ha_ – for the first time makes James look a little intimidated. “You know what I meant.”

 “You want me to ignore you? Kind of hard, we’ve got a movie to make together, interacting is _kind of the point…_ ” James grins at her. “Acting is reacting, didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

Words, Lily is beginning to realise, aren’t getting her anywhere; because James is James, and anything she says will just be twisted and aimed back at her with lethal precision. She wonders, suddenly, if he’d get _half_ the call-backs he does if people knew what he was like to work with. But then, he’s not like this with anyone else, is he? No, _this_ side of James – smirking James, vicious James, the James that’s standing entirely too close to her looking entirely unruffled and entirely too hot –this is a James Porter, apparently, that only she gets too see.

 _Shit._ Did she just think hot?

His fingers are still resting under her chin, and he taps his thumb against her jaw then,  dragging a surprised intake of breath from her lips. “Penny for them?”

Words aren’t going to achieve anything; and besides, he doesn’t _really_ want to know what she was thinking, he just enjoys watching her squirm – and suddenly, _suddenly_ Lily knows what she can do to reverse the game, at least a little.

She leans up, raising herself slightly onto the tips of her toes, and drags her lips over his.

James lets out a sort of undignified squeak –his free hand flailing wildly, his eyes almost comically wide – but then Lily slides her hands up to the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer, and he gets the idea, his hands coming to rest at her hips. Their mouths slide together with a sort of bruising heat, and  when Lily pulls away, she’s gasping for air. James follows, mirroring her movement, his forehead knocking against hers; for a heart-stopped second, they stare at each other through half-lidded eyes.

It’s not affection that flashes between them then, but it’s _something,_ and it makes Lily feel a little sick.

But then he’s kissing her again, and she stumbles backwards, dragging him with her until she can lean against the side of a car, the metal so hot she can feel it through her dress. He presses himself closer, their bodies fitting together like a two badly-formed puzzle pieces,  their breaths coming in fast, murmured gasps now, their hands clutching at any inch of exposed skin – James has got his fingers trailing up and under the lacy sleeves of her dress, and Lily – Lily notices with a sharp kind of tug at the pit of her stomach that she’s undone the top three buttons of his shirt, tugged the necktie to one side, and pressed her thumbs against his collarbones.

“We’re going-“ he mumbles against the kiss, pulling back a fraction of an inch. “To be late-“

Lily ignores him, and tugs his bottom lip between her teeth. The resulting moan is one of the most _satisfying_ sounds he’s ever made around her,

*

Somehow, they get through the rest of the day; and if she dawdles as everyone clears the set, _well,_ so does he.

They don’t bother driving anywhere; this is a larger production, they have actual trailers this time, actual trailers with a _couch,_ and it’s here that Lily finds herself later, head pillowed on James’s chest, heart racing in time with his laboured breathing,

James’s arm is curled around her side so she’s tucked right against him, warm in her ratty t-shirt and, mortifyingly, just one sock; Lily shifts slightly, pressing her cheek against his bare skin, and hears him breathe out quietly at the touch.

She doesn’t know what compels her to do it, except suddenly she wants to stay – and that’s exactly why she can’t.

“Let go of me,” she says, her voice brittle, throat still dry. She sits up, James’s hand falling away from her side, and pushes herself to the edge of the couch. James watches her, mystified.

“What?”

“I have to go,” she says, too quietly for it to carry any sting; but then, she’s sitting on _his_ couch, looking for her underwear and one striped sock on the floor of _his_ trailer, it’s not like she has any kind of hold over him, anyway.

“Lily –“ he grunts slightly, sitting up properly now; Lily flinches away when he strokes cautiously over her shoulder, and he drops his hand with a sigh. “Okay. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Lily nods, _finally_ dressed and slipping on her shoes – and then she gets to her feet, picks up her handbag, and heads for the door without looking back,

*

It’s not going to happen again.

It’s _definitely_ not going to happen again.

It’s really, absolutely never happening again –

They have another few weeks of shooting _Anne_ left, but after that they’ll never have to see each other again. So really, Lily’s probably overreacting.

*

Except of course she wasn’t overreacting, she was _underreacting (_ which, whatever, isn’t a word). They have a premiere to get through first, and somehow between wrapping _I Can’t Wait_ and now this tiny indie production has gathered quite a lot of weight, and there’s an actual red carpet with actual photographers… Photographers who all expect to get their shots of the two co-stars posing together.

James’s hand is curled around her waist, his presence beside her steady and somehow reassuring in this frighteningly alien world of flashing cameras and shouted questions. Lily smiles when she’s told to smile, turns to each camera in turn when she’s told to turn, keeps her hand resting lightly on James’s shoulder. But she can’t take it all in, which isn’t _fair,_ it’s her very first premiere and she feels like she’s missing it.

“Focus,” she hears James mutter, through clenched teeth. “What’s gotten into you?”

She ignores him, smiling even wider for the cameras, but the jibe runs down her spine like hot ash.

Thankfully, they’re inside not ten minutes later, sitting down next to a whole slew of familiar faces. Lily smiles and waves hello then sits back and waits for the movie to start.

The lights have already gone down by the time she fully processes the fact that James is sitting next to her, his shoulder just brushing against hers as he shifts in his seat. Warmth washes over her; slowly, ever so slowly, she shifts closer, until their legs are pressed together, thigh-to-thigh, the skirt of her dress riding up just enough so that his suit pants are grazing her bare skin. The opening scene starts playing, and that’s…sort of the last of the movie Lily actually pays attention to.

*

By the time the credits roll, Lily is exhausted; she feels like she’s just run a marathon. Her breathing is shallow, laboured, her hands are pressed tightly together against her kneecaps, and she think she’s developing a crick in her neck from so decidedly _not_ turning her head for two hours straight.

They don’t look at each other as they make their way outside, both finding a separate cab full of acquaintances to attach themselves to – so it isn’t until much later that Lily sees James again, across the hazy bar they’ve rented out for the after-party. She’s stuck with Anna-from-Britain for the past hour, and Anna is celebrating turning 21 and _finally being of legal drinking age again._ They’ve been matching each other champagne-flute-for-champagne-flute, and the bubbles are starting to make Lily feel a little light-headed. It’s definitely the bubbles, and _not_ the way James meets her eyes for a few seconds before turning away to talk to the girl who played his sister, a stunningly leggy girl with shiny hair and an obnoxious laugh. Lily never had a scene with her, but somehow she’s sure they _wouldn’t get along_.

“I want to dance,” Anna announces, downing her cocktail and pulling Lily towards the dance floor, and Lily – Lily, who hates clubbing and never dances and usually wants people to _stop_ looking at herif she isn’t hiding behind a character –grins, letting the low bass pulse up through her feet and up the backs of her legs,  shaking her hair out of her eyes,  circling her hips in lazy circles, eyes half-closed and definitely _not_ looking for _anyone_ in the crowd.

*

She’s been dancing for hours, or maybe days, Lily somehow isn’t sure; there’s something addictive about letting go like this, about the way the music is running through her veins, making her limbs feel loose and her skin tingle. British Intern Anna is well on her way to being just-turned-21-wasted, clutching at Lily and almost pulling them both to the floor several times. Lily giggles despite herself – _god,_ she hasn’t giggled like this since high school, but there’s something about dancing like this that feels endearingly juvenile  - and everything is _hilarious_ until suddenly there’s James, dragging her closer by the wrist, his eyes burning into hers even as he forces out something approaching a “Hello, sorry,” to Anna (who by now is, apparently, happily just turning slowly on the spot).

Lily rests her hands on James’s shoulders, breathing him in; they dance together for the remainder of the song, although she’s not sure if this really counts as _dancing –_ it’s mostly swaying to the beat, an excuse to stand a little too close to each other . James is humming along to the tune, and Lily takes a moment to notice that _wow, he actually knows something current_ before she gets distracted by the way his lips catch the lights from a disco ball, the way his eyes look wide and luminous in the dark, the way his chest is lined up with hers. Taking a deep breath, Lily experimentally grinds her hips against his, and she swears she hears the humming stutter.

“Question,” she says then, half-pressing her face against James’s neck; his hands tighten on her waist, almost imperceptibly. 

“Mmh?”

“Would it be totally impolite to leave already.”

He exhales sharply, the puff of air ghosting against the shell of Lily’s ear. “Don’t know –“ he pulls back, taking her hand in his and starting towards the doors. “Don’t care.”

Lily lets out a small, breathless laugh, hurrying to match his strides. “That’s what I thought.”

*

He walks with her to the street corner and waits until her taxi arrives. There’s a pause, but it’s not necessarily _awkward –_ they just don’t have anything to say to each other like this.

“Is this going to keep happening?” Lily asks, and then wishes she hadn’t, because James inches away from her slightly, the hand that was resting at the small of her back falling away .

“No.”

“…Right.”

“I mean,” James corrects himself, rubbing a few fingers across his face, looking exhausted. “I mean, it’s not like –“

“Shut up,” Lily snaps, suddenly bone-tired; she can feel the beginnings of a hangover pounding at the base of her skull.  “ _God,_ Porter, I get it.”

James looks at her, apparently confused by her change in tone – which isn’t _fair,_ he doesn’t _get to feel hurt_ here, it’s not like he _cares._ “You do?” he asks her, his voice low and sort of…tentative. Lily squares her shoulders instinctively.

“Yeah,” she says flatly. “You don’t like me, I don’t like you.”

“Right,” James nods, looking strangely – _disappointed_ isn’t a word Lily wants to use, but it feels appropriate. “Right. This was a – thing.”

“A thing,” Lily echoes. “It’s not like we’re gonna see much of each other after next week, anyway.”

“Next week, right,” James is stepping away now, hands in his pockets. “Right.”

At that moment the ordered taxi arrives, rescuing Lily from having to come up with another platitude to fill the silence – she gives James another nod, and then steps away. “Bye, Porter.”

“See you,” he says quietly, with a searching look. “I’ll see you Monday?”

Lily nods, already getting into the idling car. “See you.”

She slams the door shut and leans her head against the window, watching as James’s figure blurs into the night sky on the horizon before looking away.

They’ll see each other on Monday. Six more days of filming, then a good long break before press and promotional stuff, then they’ll be _done._

She wonders if the lie was as obvious to him as it was to her; wonders if he actually _meant_ it when he told her it wasn’t going to happen again.

*

Whether he _meant it_ or not becomes a moot point early the following week, when they’re running lines in his trailer over breakfast and Lily licks a few drops of hot chocolate off the inside of her wrist and his eyes get stuck –

So. It’s a Thing, yeah. A Thing that keeps… happening. Lily doesn’t quite understand what it is they’re doing to each other – it’s not attraction and it’s certainly not _affection_ but it’s somewhere sweeter than indifference, somewhere far less tangible than pure dislike. There’s just something about James that brings it out in her; it’s what casting agents and directors see when they walk into a room together, it’s what makes acting opposite James simultaneously easier and more _difficult_ than anything Lily’s done before.

It’s what brings them back to this moment, over and over again: lips sliding over sighing lips, bodies fitting together in an imperfect, perfect way, hands finding each other in the dark and clinging tight.

They become almost routine, these Things – and while Lily would never dreamof _making_ _plans_ with James, they simply…begin to show up to the same clubs, the same parties, the same Thursday night blues jams at the Coffee Loft. It becomes a game; they’ll ignore each other all night, until they don’t.

It’s a game Lily enjoys playing, though she’s fast losing track of who’s winning - and she’s not sure she ever read the rulebook in the first place. When the call comes for _Dancing in the Rain –_ and when, on the day of her screen test, the door opens to reveal James in a borrowed-looking tux and bowtie – she’s hardly surprised. 

There’s _something_ going on here; she can’t quite put her finger on _what_ that something is yet. But she has time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so...clearly I am not going to actually get this finished before the final Yulin drabble tomorrow. But I guess this is pretty much officially an AU now, anyway, so oh well! Up to you how much of this you want to incorporate into your personal headcanons, obviously - I know it contradicts some canonized events already, and that's probably going to keep happening... As you may be able to tell from this chapter, the original idea kind of got away from me a bit. Oops.


	3. feels so natural to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during and after filming for the Episode 3 project. 3757 words, with a lot of really mushy taking-care-of-a-sick-person tropes. 
> 
> RATED T for cursing and a tiny little bit of mature allusions (definitely less than in chapter two though, so if you got through that you'll be fine)

In hindsight, Lily thinks she should have seen it coming. Really, it comes as a surprise that it’s taken her _this_ long to get sick – that she made it through two whole projects with far too  many rain scenes without even getting a blocked nose.

Third time’s the charm, apparently.

She wakes up shivering at five thirty a.m. the morning after the kiss scene, unable to get warm despite the multiple blankets and covers she’s curled up under. Her mouth is dry, her chest feels tight, and somehow it’s hard to breathe. When Lily stumbles to the bathroom to splash her face with warm water, she starts coughing – and once she’s started coughing, she can’t stop. She’s still in the bathroom half an hour later, resting her head against the bathtub and miserably hacking up bile every few minutes .

After falling back into bed with a scarf wrapped around her head and a hot water bottle clutched to her chest, Lily starts texting for reinforcements.

Thank god Pam chose this weekend to visit set; her hotel room is just down the hall from Lily’s, and she breezes in ten minutes later, looking far too chipper for six in the morning (though Lily has a sneaking suspicion she hasn’t actually been to bed yet).

“Hey,” Lily croaks from her bed, when she hears the key turn in the lock; Pam walks into the bedroom, and stops dead  in the doorway.

“You look like shit,” she says; Lily tries to scowl, but moving her facial muscles that much elicits another bout of coughing.

“Thanks,” she says, wheezing, once the worst of it seems to be over; Pam pulls an apologetic sort of grimace, and comes to sit on the bed. She presses her hand to Lily’s forehead, and winces. “No, _don’t_ ,  I don’t have a fever–“

“Lils,” Pam interrupts her flatly. “You’re burning up.”

Lily struggles upright. “I only asked if you could drive me to work,” she growls, wincing internally at the way her head feels like it’s filled with cotton wool as soon as she’s upright, and goes to pick up her bathrobe. “I’ll get ready, and then we can go.”

“ _Lily._ ”

“I’m _not –“_ Lily pauses to cough into her hands. “S _ick –_ “

Pam doesn’t say a word, just gently pushes Lily back into bed and tucks the covers tightly around her shivering body. “Stay,” she says sternly. “I’m making you some camomile tea, and then we can phone your director.”

“I have to _get to work,_ I’ll be fine with some painkillers, I’m just –“ A shiver runs through Lily, and she gives up on complete sentences. “ _Pam,_ ” she whines, reaching up to clutch at her best friend’s wrist. “I can’t be sick, I’ll mess up the shooting.”

Pam pats her, not unkindly. “They’ll understand,” she says, sounding momentarily a little fierce. “You’re their lead, they’ll just have to deal. I’ll _make_ them understand.”

*

The producers are, not unsurprisingly, upset – but Pam fields them effortlessly, talking about getting medical evidence and making thinly-veiled allusions to taking it up with SAG. After a few more phone-calls – calls  which Lily is only half-aware of, drifting in an out of consciousness in a feverish haze – they move around enough of the shooting schedule to have something to do until she recovers.

Recovery, though, proves frustratingly elusive. After three days of Pam-supervised bed rest, Lily drags herself to a walk-in clinic, where she’s told to drink a lot of fluids and (surprise, surprise) stay in bed.

By the fifth day, Lily is feeling a little better – well enough to sit up and eat a few crackers or slices of toast, well enough to reply to work emails and dip in and out of a back-to-back marathon of the first three seasons of _Dawson’s Creek._ The cough persists, as does the fever and the light-headedness, so she makes an executive decision not to leave the house unless absolutely necessary… But she’s run out of groceries,  and after six days of tea and crackers Lily is ready for something a _little_ more substantial; she calls for take-out, treating herself to a full Thai curry with sticky rice from the one place nearby that caters to dietary oddities.

 _Big_ mistake.

Half an hour after starting her meal, she’s back to whimpering in the bathroom, kneeling on the tiles and clutching her stomach. Okay, so apparentlyshe’s not quite ready for meals cooked with, you know, actual butter and oil yet. _Great_.

After a night of abject misery, Lily texts Pam early the next morning.

**_Emergency. Puking up everything I eat again. Bring soup._ **

Pam replies immediately: **_Soup delivery impossible, I left last night, remember? Back in LA. Sorry babe!! Anything I can do??_**

 _Ugh_.

Lily really had forgotten; it’s been so nice having Pam around to bring her fresh towels and watch TV with her, and all at once she feels incredibly homesick. Before she has a chance to compose an appropriately pitiful response, though, another text arrives: **_Scratch that, replacement soup courier has been procured. Sit tight!_**

Lily barely has time to process this before Pam sends her a third message, even more ominous than the last: **_Maybe put some lip gloss on. And those cute pyjamas with the hippos._**

*

When James shows up at her complex two hours later, Lily hardly has the energy to feel outraged, simply buzzes him up and opens the door with a tired “Pam?”

“Pam,” James confirms, holding up two bags filled with groceries and a stack of magazines. “She knew I was in town, obviously, and she already had my number from the –“

“The Christmas thing, right –“ Lily closes her eyes and fights the urge to grimace. Pam had _covertly_ made eyes at James all night, and when they left she’d taken up the entire drive home trying to talk some kind of confession out of Lily – Lily had thought at the time she’d been convincing enough, but apparently not.

James gives her a small smile. “And obviously I got a few days off work, so…”

“Yeah,” Lily groans, now leading the way into the kitchenette attached to her room. “Sorry about that.”

“Not _your_ fault,” he half-laughs, dumbing the grocery bags on a counter and starting to unpack them. “Okay, there’s tomato and basil, chicken broth and rice, cream of mushroom…. And I brought lemons and honey, so let me know if you want tea or something, uh –“

Lily sinks down onto a chair, overwhelmed. James fishes out the last packet of crackers and sets it down, then stands back and shoves his hands into his pockets, clearly out of his comfort zone.

“Thank you,” Lily says, somewhat redundantly; she forces herself to look at him as she speaks, despite the crawling sense of awkwardness that’s threatening to force its way into the silences between them. “Seriously, you didn’t have to do this, Pam get a bit – carried away sometimes, she’s  great and I love her, but…”

“I don’t mind,” James tells her, and Lily feels the corners of her mouth turn up into an unwilling smile. “And I’m staying till you’ve eaten some soup, so you may as well make it easy for yourself and tell me which one to cook.”

His tone allows for no discussion. After a momentary internal struggle, Lily points at the chicken broth.  “That one.”

“Good choice,” James grins, and starts opening cupboard doors at random until he finds a saucepan.  “Now go watch a movie or something, I’ll bring it out when it’s done.”

“You really don’t have to do this –“

He cuts her off with a look, and: “Yes I do.” In the silence that follows, Lily can feel the blood rushing to flush her cheeks – for the first time in nearly a week, she feels _warm_ from the inside out – and then James winks at her. “The sooner you get better, the sooner we can get on with shooting. It’s totally selfishly motivated, obviously.”

Lily hiccups a laugh. “Obviously.”

“Now go,” he tells her, crossing the kitchen and pushing her gently towards the bed, the palms of his hands warm on her shoulders. “Rest. Doctor’s orders.”

*

He stays until Lily’s cleared her plate, refusing her please for a re-fill until she’s kept it down for an hour. They fill the time with the first few minutes of _Titanic –_ although James gets worried when Lily bursts into tears as soon as the first few notes of vaguely-Celtic-Celine-Dion start playing, and makes her switch it off long before the iceberg hits.

“ _One_ more serving,” he tells her, returning from the kitchenette with another bowl full of heavenly-smelling soup . “Don’t want to overdo it.”

“Okay, okay,” Lily grumbles, reaching her hands up from the couch and smacking her lips together. “Hand it over.”

James laughs, handing her the bowl. “Eat it _slowly,_ ” he starts to say; and then stops when Lily begins gulping it down. “Or not.”

“Shut up and let me eat,” Lily mumbles, through a mouthful of rice. “It’s a compliment.”

“Right, to my _amazing_ culinary skills…opening a box and adding water.” Lily shrugs, grinning; James rolls his eyes, though there’s no real sting to his tone when he adds, “I guess I’ll take it.”

Lily bites back a laugh, meeting James’s eyes for a moment before turning away slightly to focus on the soup. It’s the first really nourishingmeal she’s had in way too long, and there’s something intrinsically _comforting_ about having something cooked _for_ her.

James sits beside her on the edge of the bed, apparently content to stay there in silence for now – he’s half-watching the episode of _Dawson’s Creek_ he made her switch back to when she started bawling about Jack and Rose – Lily’s sure she can feel him looking at her, but whenever she glances over he’s focused entirely on the TV.

*

Half an hour and a dose of NyQuil later, Lily is curled up under her blanket and fading fast. James catches her eyes when she lets out a particularly long yawn, and raises his eyebrows.

“Sleep,” he says decisively, getting to his feet and leaning across Lily to reach the remote, turning the TV off mid-scene despite her grumbling protestations. “You could do with some rest.”

“M’not…” Lily yawns. “That tired…”

“Sure,” James grins,. “How about you just get into bed? And if you’re still awake in ten minutes, you win a prize.”

“Deal,” Lily mumbles, rolling over and ending up face-down on her pillows. Dimly, she’s aware of James laughing to himself, James reaching around her to turn off her bedside light, James pulling the covers up and over her shoulders, James depositing a mug of tea next to her pile of magazines.

Lily thinks he strokes her bangs out of her eyes, too, but by then she’s almost gone; the last thing she’s aware of is a gentle touch to her forehead, warm and light and fleeting.

In her dreams they kiss properly, his lips pressed against hers, their bodies tangled together in the pouring rain –she’s inexplicably in the dress she wore to her senior prom, and there’s something about mashed potatoes, Lily doesn’t quite know what that’s about – but when she wakes up, the evening sun is streaming through her windows , there’s a plate of gluten-free muffins sitting on her bedside table,  and James is gone.

*

Lily gets back to work a week later;  James gives her a bright smile when she walks into the make-up trailer, his whole face lighting up. _God, she is so screwed._

“Hey, good to see you,” he offers,  meeting her eyes in the mirror. “Feeling better?”

“Obviously,” Lily replies curtly, dropping into her chair and picking up a magazine. She can feel James watching on her, but keeps her eyes on the fashion spreads, only looking up to greet the make-up girl and tell her she remembered to moisturise, but not tone, that morning, as instructed.

“Thanks, doll,” Roxie laughs,  ruffling over Lily’s hair and picking up the first tube of foundation.  “Ready to look awesome?”

“Tall order,” James throws their way – and it’s a joke, Lily _knows_ it’s a joke, his eyes are too warm and crinkled around the edges for it to be a real jibe – but that doesn’t stop her from shooting him a sour look.

“I just had _bronchitis_.”

“Hey, I know-“ suddenly James looks troubled. “I was kidding –“

“Cut it, okay?” Lily asks, closing her eyes and turning her face towards a brush-wielding Roxie, who has perfected the art of making it seem like she can’t hear a single word the actors in her trailer are saying to each other. “I feel like shit, and you’re not helping.”

James, understandably, doesn’t reply to that;  and Lily avoids him for the rest of the day – which is made somewhat easier by the fact that they’re shooting with two separate units for the first time since starting _Dancing in the Rain._

*

The next time she sees him, they’ve wrapped for the day,  and he’s leaning against the door of her trailer, arms folded, half-squinting in the setting sun.

“Hey.”

“What?” Lily asks, rummaging around in her handbag for her keys (her trailer has a _door with a lock,_ she’s really moving up in the world). “Can I get to my door please?”

“I was thinking,” James continues, as if she hadn’t spoken. “There’s this new movie theater down the street from the hotel, kind of done up like old Hollywood, chandeliers and live piano music, they’re doing a Rogers-Astaire festival this weekend, we should go check it out before we leave.”

Lily blinks, and takes a deep breath that gets caught somewhere at the back of her throat. “I can’t, I have this thing.”

“This thing?”

“ _Yes,_ this thing,” she snaps, suddenly impatient, finally retrieving her keys. “And I need to get home, I’ll talk to you -“

“What about tomorrow?” James asks, and _god,_ this is more difficult than it should be. “You got a _thing_ tomorrow night?”

“I –“ Lily hesitates, then swallows back the rising guilt and sets her shoulders. “I’m not gonna go out with you.”

A long pause follows her declaration, the silence so tangible that Lily can almost feel it pressing against her ears, like she’s dived into a bottom-less lake and is suddenly out of her depth.

“Lily –“

“I need my _stuff,_ ” she snaps, tugging once on his arm – _finally,_ he seems to get the message, and lets her push past him to unlock her trailer door.

She’s about to go inside and slam the door in his face when his fingers close around her wrist. “Wait,” he says, his voice low, his face too close to hers; Lily can count his eyelashes, can see where they criss-cross and where the make-up has made them clump together. His thumb strokes over the pulse in her wrist, and he takes another step towards her, bringing them – impossibly – even closer together.

“I…” The words dry up in Lily’s throat, and James shakes his head minutely; he breathes her in for a moment, and then his lips are pressed against hers.

Lily wants to shove him away, she knows she _should_ shove him away, but her body betrays her; he swallows her moans, and when his hips tilt against hers Lily lets her eyes fall shut, the sunlight staining the darkness with red against her eyelids. They kiss like they’re drowning, lost in each other;  Lily doesn’t know how long they stand there, pressed against her trailer door, wrapped tightly around each other, but when she pulls back she knows it’s done.

She gestures at her trailer, and James – James, with his big wet eyes and his crooked bowtie and that one tuft of hair that always falls over his forehead – lets her push past him without another word.

*

The wrap party comes a week later, and she is aware at every moment of his presence, of his body in relation to hers in the room – but she talks to Roxie, she has a few drinks, she even flirts a little with Ricky the AD’s assistant for a while until it becomes clear that his attention has been diverted elsewhere – and she doesn’t think about James.

Not Thinking About James, as it turns out, is a little more exhausting than Lily thought; when he walks up to the bar behind her, she blurts out a “What?”

He pauses for a split second – and it that moment, hanging in the balance, Lily has time to consider exactly _how_ she knew he was walking up to her, _nice work on the ignoring, good job, Everett, god –_ before shrugging dismissively and sliding onto a barstool. “Nothing. Get over yourself, I just wanted to get another drink.”

Lily flushes, and looks away, defensive. “I didn’t mean-“

He’s got the attention of the bartender now, and signals for another Old Fashioned by waving his empty tumbler. “Whatever,” he says, picking up his drink and already standing up again. “Have a great night, Lily. See you back in LA.”

He walks away from her without so much as a glance in her direction, and Lily feels distinctly like he’s winning whatever sick kind of competition this has turned into.

*

She leaves soon after that, and spends the rest of the night doing laundry and packing her suitcase while morosely emptying the mini-bar of three tiny wine bottles. She’s in bed by midnight, and she lies awake telling herself that she’s not _upset,_ but – but she’s just a little too wasted to really believe herself, and ends up scrolling twitter with incriminatingly damp cheeks for another hour.

James tweets a selfie from the party, with some girl wrapped around his neck, brunette and curvy and laced into a tight dress. The caption reads _look who showed up to celebrate! missed youuuuuuu –_ and Lily allows herself ten seconds of pure, wine-laced self-pity, until she registers the girl’s twitter handle, tagged in the picture: @iamaudreyporter.

Porter. Right, so… His sister. Okay.

Okay, good.

 _Good_? Lily rolls her eyes at herself, then firmly puts the phone away and turns the lights out. _Whatever ._ It’s not like she cares – _god_ , she doesn’t care.

*

She blames a return of the bronchitis for her all-too-brief appearance at the _Anne of Green Gables_ premiere (like anyone cares, honestly, the paparazzi got their photos of her on the red carpet, smiling and smiling and smiling next to James, what’s it to them if she doesn’t stay for the movie?) – and then suddenly three months have gone by.

Lily avoids the early buzz around _Dancing in the Rain;_ avoids reading reviews, even after an early screening  garners some critical attention(although she lets Pam, who somehow got a ticket, yell at her about the kiss scene for a good half an hour on the phone later that night). It’s all part of her new distancing policy – she doesn’t Google herself, she doesn’t spend time looking at fan sites and tumblr tags, she’s barely on Twitter. The _shipping_ seems to be carrying on just fine without her having to know about it, and it’s… freeing, actually, not to be constantly reminded of a certain Person.

A certain Person who she’s kissed too many times, caught on camera or burned into her memories, with rain falling around them or the setting sun too bright in her eyes, hiding behind characters or feeling dangerously, addictively open –

Whatever. It’s done, _she’s_ done, this…thing, whatever it was, has no more power over her.

*

Lily feels very mature for making these decisions. What she doesn’t count on is the way her stomach twists into knots as soon as she sees him at SXSW, looking impossibly windswept and sporting a recently-went-on-vacation tan; he’s in a white t-shirt and jeans, nothing special, but the skin of his arms is bronzed and – fuck. He’s got _muscles._ When did that happen?

“Lily,” James calls, raising a hand in greeting and making his way across the lobby; Lily freezes,  unable to ignore the inch of bare stomach that’s revealed when his shirt rides up, exposing the dip of his hipbones -

“Hi,” she squeaks, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

It’s a difficult week.

*

When it’s over Lily calls up Pam, and demands to finally be set up with Chris from marketing. It’s early spring, a good time to start dating again,  and Lily could do with an excuse to get dressed up and go for a fancy meal –and it’s got _nothing_ to do with the four nights she spent _definitely not staring_ at her disconcertingly-hot, offputtingly-distant….ex co-star.

 Is that what they are? Lily doesn’t know if there’s a word for it, this ebb and flow of _not caring,_ the inevitability with which they keep finding themselves working together, spending time together – _sleeping together_ , although that’s been over now for months.

The date with Chris-from-marketing goes about as well as she should have expected; halfway through the salads, he asks her about _working with James Porter_.

“You’re so lucky, to have found that kind of professional relationship so early in your careers,” he gushes, when Lily mumbles out a vague, noncommittal response. “Any plans for your next project?”

“We’re not working together on anything else,” she says quickly taking a sip of wine to steady the jittering in her fingers. “I don’t know what his plans are, but he’s – got quite a lot of attention out of our last movie together, you know, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was off having meetings with all kinds of major studios right now, so…”

Chris raises an eyebrow, patiently waiting for her to finish that thought; Lily flushes dark red, and takes another sip of wine.

*

The gods of irony must really have it in for her; three days later, when she goes to delete a voicemail from Chris, she’s confronted with an invitation to meet with the producers for an _untitled socially awkward poets’ project._ A comedy, apparently. Developed from a web-series about Edgar Allen Poe which was wildly successful a few years ago, perhaps she’s heard of it… Feeling distinctly uneasy, Lily goes to YouTube, and searches for _A Tell-Tale Vlog._

The face staring up at her in the thumbnails _really_ _shouldn’t_ surprise her at this point, but Lily still lets out an embarrassingly startled snort and slams her laptop shut.

 _If there’s rain_ , she decides there and then, _I’m going to murder someone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10’000 words in three days hahahaha what is this fandom and what has it brought out in me. Should have chapter four up tomorrow! Will they start communicating??? Will there be more tropey trope mush???? Is it still a Secretly Banging AU if they’re not Secretly Banging???? SO MANY QUESTIONS.


	4. some people run right into the fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2606 words, slightly shorter chapter this time around but I didn't get to start writing till like midnight. Oops.
> 
> RATED T for language and not much else.

There’s rain.

Lily almost cries when she’s sent the script, just days before the table read, and comes across the line - _Annabelle tosses her umbrella aside and KISSES EDGAR, cutting him off mid-sentence._

Of _course_ there’s rain.        

At least she gets to stay in LA, and at least they’re filming in the summer this time, thereby drastically improving her chances of getting through the _Untitled Socially Awkward Poets Movie_ without contracting another bout of bronchitis. Lily doesn’t think she could deal with a horrifically awkward repeat of the emergency soup delivery.

They don’t speak at the table read, beyond the absolute minimum of pleasantries;  and that, somehow, sets the tone for the whole project. Thankfully, it’s an ensemble piece – and Lily knows the crew well enough now, too, so it’s not like there’s a shortage of people to talk to. She hangs out with Anna, promoted to third AD now and looking to extend her work visa; she makes small talk with the girl who’s playing Emily Dickinson and finds out they went to the same school; she tweets pictures from set and starts a few harmless conversations with her followers. And if mentions of James crop up a few times in her replies, well – she scrolls past them, ignoring the stab that lands somewhere between her ribs every time she does.

And James is always there, at the edge of her peripheral vision, the corner of her eye where she never wants to look but finds herself drawn to over and over again. It’s almost surreal, the way she always knows exactly where in the room he is, the way she’s always aware of what he’s doing or who he’s talking to even though she’s holding a conversation with someone else and apparently not even glancing in his direction – it’s an hard craft, pretending Not to Care about James, but Lily’s a fast learner.

There are moments, though, when she thinks she catches him – not _looking_ at her, that’d be too obvious, but… Not Looking at her in way that feels familiar. She wonders, in those silences that stretch between them every time they’re told to hold for another take, if he’s playing his own version of Not Caring. And then he’ll smile at the runner who’s handing him a bottle of water, or he’ll flirt his way to another soy milk latte even though the closest Starbucks is three blocks away, or he’ll text someone rather than talk to her, and – Lily thinks that if he _is_ playing the same game as her, then she’s definitely losing.

*

By the time she gets on set to film the kiss scene for the recently-titled _Syntax,_ four weeks have gone by and Lily can count their out-of-character conversations on the fingers of one hand.

There’s something a little familiar and a little sweet about watching the crew setting up the rain rigs around them, about the weight of an umbrella resting against her shoulders, about the fleece blankets and portable heaters waiting for them under a nearby gazebo – and _sitting in fake rain_ shouldn't have this much nostalgia attached to it, but it does.

They run their lines together for a few minutes while the lights are being focused. It’s mostly James who has lines, and all Lily really has to do is sit there and listen to him, reacting in-character to his love poetry – _Edgar’s_ love poetry – over and over again. James keeps his gaze focused on the pages of script in his hand; Lily watches his eyes move across the page, watches his brow crease in concentration when he hits a particularly long line, watches him absent-mindedly lick his lips whenever he reaches the end of a stanza –

And then he’s putting the script aside and looking up at her with warmth in his eyes, and Lily blanches; and then he mumbles, “It’s not finished, and the last stanza’s terrible, and –“ he blinks a few times. “The whole thing’s pretty bad, honestly, but –“

She kisses him.

Instantly, Lily knows it’s a mistake; knows because he freezes up against her touch, his face stiff; knows because there’s no rain beating down on them, no cameras rolling, there’s no one even _watching_ them, _god,_ they’re only supposed to be running lines, and she’s kissing him.

Lily doesn’t know how to fix this; doesn’t know how to excuse her actions without making everything between them even more awkward, she just knows she has to get out of his sight right now –

And then his hands are cupping her cheeks, holding her closer; his lips are moving against hers, slowly at first, tentatively, like he’s testing the boundaries as much as she’s just broken through them. His thumb strokes over her jaw, and Lily shivers, sighing slightly when his lips part hers. Her heart is beating out a crazy kind of rhythm against her ribs, and her skin is tingling with a kind of electric recognition, responding to the touch that she’s gone without for so _long_ – it’s been _months_ since she’s kissed him like this, but she still remembers the outline of his shoulders under her palms, still recognises the way his nose presses against her cheek, a little awkward and a little undignified and a little _hot,_ like she’s attracted to the fact that he’s taller than her, what the hell. She’s just running her tongue over his, smiling inwardly when he moans into her mouth at the touch, when -

“Beautiful,” the director calls out, and they spring apart. “Really lovely work, guys, but Lily, we need you to grab his lapels, not his shoulders, it comes off a little aggressive –“

“Okay,” Lily nods, on auto-pilot, looking anywhere but at James.

“The surprise factor is great, though,” Julia tells her enthusiastically, eyes bright with what Lily can only classify as _shippy goggles_. “Definitely keep that in.”

 They’re told to sit tight while a loose lens gets fixed. Lily stares at her kneecaps, and fights the urge to lick her lips. Somewhere out of the corner of her eyes, she sees James pick up his script again; he lifts his hand, sucking the tip of one finger into his mouth and _shit shit shit –_ he turns a page, and Lily feels both incredibly stupid and kind of creepy.

*

They get through the first three takes in quick succession, Julia asking Lily to adjust the angle of her umbrella or telling James that he needs to enunciate the poem a little more, and then there’s a lull while one of the rain rigs gets adjusted.

Lily takes a deep breath, smacking her lips together and forcing herself to look across at James.

“James, can we –“ _talk,_ she wants to say, or maybe even _talk about this,_ but he cuts her off.

“Nope.”

She freezes, unable to ignore the way the casual rejection settles on her shoulders, unfamiliar and a little cold against her skin. He doesn’t even look at her, already distracted by a text from someone much more worthy of his time, and she doesn’t know when this happened, when James wormed his way under her skin like this, when she started cataloguing and analysing every time he looks at her, or doesn’t. When she started _caring._

The silence stretches on between them, jarringly loud; Lily clears her throat, suddenly kind of thrown by the sharpness of the sound. “Can I get a touch-up, please?” James isn’t looking at her, so she doesn’t know why turns her back as she says it. “And a towel.”

Beside her, James lets out a barely-audible huff of air; she looks over, and he’s texting again, the corners of his mouth turned up into an amused half-smile.  When he catches her eyes, it’s too late to disguise her looking, though she does her best to disguise it as a haughty stare.

“It’s a…pretty funny text message,” he says, somewhat unnecessarily; Lily doesn’t know why this makes her roll her eyes, but she does so anyway.

“Cool.”

And that’s the extent of their conversation. Lily closes her eyes when Tess-from-make-up approaches with a palette of blushers and foundation, and doesn’t open them again until Julia’s calling for another take.

*

Lily wraps on Annabelle six days later,  and flies home for a long weekend of bad reality TV and baked goods provided by her mom. It’s a little childish, running home like this, but it does her good; she disconnects her phone for her entire trip, eats too much, lets her parents talk her into going on a hike up the nearest mountain, and laughs louder and more freely than she’s felt like laughing for far too long.

 _Syntax_ continues shooting without her. It’s strange, how after only three outings as the lead female Lily almost feels _shunted aside_ now that she’s just one of an ensemble, but it’s refreshing, too. This _thing,_ this her-and-James dynamic that keeps getting them cast opposite each other, it’s…not the whole world. It never has been.

She flies back to LA feeling energised and motivated, and immediately calls her agent to ask about any more projects coming her way, _big or small, I don’t care, just something meaty with a lot of character –_

But she gets told there’s nothing suitable at the moment.

Which, cool. Happens.

And then a few weeks go by, and Lily still hasn’t heard from her agent, and she calls her again – which, whatever, is breaking some unspoken rule, but she’s beyond bored and beyond caring.

“Hey, Peggy,” she says, injecting a modicum of enthusiasm into her greeting. “I was just calling to check in, you know, see how you are –“

“Lily,” Peggy cuts in, not unkindly. “When I get a script, I’ll let you know, okay? It’s only been a few weeks, _Syntax_ hasn’t even got a trailer yet. Relax!”

“I’m _bored,_ ” Lily whines, feeling incredibly petulant. “Just let me know, yeah?”

“I will,” Peggy tells her, and they chat for a few minutes more about the type of thing Lily would like to work on next before saying their goodbyes.

She goes for a run. She texts Pam about meeting up for lunch. She replies to a few emails from distant relatives and ex-classmates. It’s okay. _She’s_ okay. This isn’t the first dry spell she’s ever faced, or the longest – it barely counts as a _dry spell,_ it’s only been a few weeks since Syntax went into post, Peggy’s right, she really does need to relax. It’s hard, though; hard not to feel like she’s hanging on by a fine thread, like any day she doesn’t deliver a stellar performance is another day closer to the entire industry deciding she isn’t worth their time or their praise or their money.  She’s getting better at ignoring the voices that whisper doubts into her daydreams, that tell her she’s an upshot wannabe and soon everyone will see her for the _fake_ she secretly is,  but…some days are easier than others.

Replying to fans on twitter is one way of feeding the narcissism, and Lily doesn’t give in to it as much as maybe she could. Too often, there’ll be a dreaded #JILY on her feed, and when she’s in this mood it’s easy to think that she’s surfing on his success, that she’s only gotten this far with his help, that she’s not that special or talented or even _interesting –_

She sends a text to Peggy, on a whim: **_Let me know if something comes up. No Porter roles this time_** _. **Want to branch out!**_

After due consideration, she adds a smiley face to sweeten the tone a little; but the message is still incriminatingly _not casual,_ staring at her from the screen of her phone the next morning.

Peggy texts her back a simple **_sure_** _,_ and Lily has to tell herself firmly that she made the right call. Something will turn up. She just has to wait.

                                                                                                   *                     

Another two weeks go by.

Then two months.

Lily’s scrolling twitter, semi-seriously considering replying to an open casting call for a film student’s final project, a music video shot in the style of Berkoff, _will pay in lunch and free exposure,_ when the call comes.

“So there’s this new project,” Peggy launches straight in, barely giving Lily time to register who’s on the line. “Kind of a homage to the thirties, kind of a comedy, a heiress who goes into hiding and falls for the reporter spying on her…”

“Sounds fun,” Lily says, sitting up a little straighter already. “Who’s attached to it?”

There is a long pause, and something like foreboding starts prickling at the top of Lily’s spine.

“I got the script in about a week ago…” Peggy says carefully. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be interested, but they just called me again, the director’s really keen to have you on board – “

“Peggy…” Lily closes her eyes; it’s too early in the morning for this.

“They’ve already cast the reporter,” Peggy tells her, already sounding apologetic. “You, um. Know him.”

“ _Peggy_!”

“I mean, you know _I_ want you to work with James again, it’s great business, really, you’re shooting yourself in the foot with this –“ Peggy cuts herself off with a sigh. “Anyway. But it’s your call. I know you said you’d rather not.”

Lily pulls a face. _Great._ So now her entire career hangs on her getting over this petty behaviour and agreeing to work with James for the _fifth_ time.

There’s a strange taste in her mouth, and Lily can’t quite figure out why; until she hears herself telling Peggy that if she sends her the script, she _could_ read it and _maybe_ consider taking a meeting – and she’s _acting._ This… This reluctance is at least fifty percent fake, and she doesn’t know who this performance is fooling. Certainly not herself.

The realisation hits her like the proverbial tonne of bricks – when did Lily start dealing in proverbs? – that sounds like something James would say, he’d probably write it down in his _character journal,_ god, he’s so pretentious –

She hangs up quickly after that, and goes to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of cold water.

*

The table read takes place six days after she takes that meeting; the whole team is already assembled, cast and crew, and she’d be lying if that didn’t feel a little good, the knowledge that they really _were_ that keen to get her.

They read the first half of the script in one sitting – everyone’s on the ball, Lily and James aiming their lines at each other like darts, and the laughs they get from the producers are genuine reactions; by the time they break for coffee, Lily’s almost having fun. It’s incriminatingly easy to slip back into it, to remind herself of what exactly it is that makes them work so well together – it’s just _there,_ in the way he fixes her with a stare and throws the lines at her like a challenge, in the way she takes up the gauntlet and serves it right back at him (it’s possible she’s mixing her metaphors a little; she didn’t sleep well last night).

And then there’s a break, and his face slips into a mask of boredom; he’s already texting by the time Lily gets back from the coffee table.

She takes a sip of her latte – and steals a glance at James. He’s not looking at her; and _his_ not looking, she’s beginning to understand, isn’t Not Looking, it’s just…indifference, plain and simple. The realisation shouldn’t surprise her, not after everything. But that doesn’t stop it from hurting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...The No Longer Secretly Banging AU, I guess??? Also, the chapter in which I break my streak of kisses-in-the-parking-lot. The people rejoice.


	5. recently i've been hopelessly reaching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during the filming of the Episode 5 project. 2513 words of miscommunication and stubbornness. 
> 
> RATED T for language and some mature-ish shenanigans (never know what to put here oh my god but if you've read this far then you won't find anything more graphic than what came before!!)

_Smith and Jones_ goes about as well as Lily could have expected; they ignore each other until the director calls “Action!” – and then, for a few short minutes at a time, they blaze together, passion and fury and mistrust tempered by a low and instinctual kind of _belonging –_

And then they cut for a break, and James turns his back and starts reading his lines, while Lily has to take a moment to get her bearings, to force herself out of Susan’s mind-set, to pat down her hair and breathe deeply. She doesn’t know when it happened, when she became such a _method_ actress – she’s always found it easy to slip in and out of character, to distance herself enough from her work that it doesn’t follow her home.  There’s something about this script that just _gets_ her; that must be it, it must be the script, she refuses to even consider the possibility that the guy she’s acting against is the thing having such an effect on her.

Because James – character-building James, notebook-filling, playlist-making, lines-blurring James – hears “Cut,” and shuts down completely. He won’t even _look_ at her, let alone look at her with any kind of _affection_ , let alone say anything beyond a passing greeting and a snide comment about her hat. It used to be almost fun, seeing him struggle to get control of himself after a particularly emotional scene, seeing him make a concerted effort to get back to being James, but now… Now he’s cool, detached, keeping his distance.

The message couldn’t be any clearer; James Porter is not interested in being friends with her, not now, not anymore. Whatever ridiculous notions Lily might have had in her sappiest moments – ideas about _looks_ and _pretending not to care_ and what it all _means,_ this ever-changing  dynamic between them, the reasons for their on-screen chemistry and off-screen  _explosiveness_   - she learns to grind them down, to ignore that tiny voice that still insists _but what if_?

*

The silences between them are fraught with unsaid accusations, and the day they come to shoot the big kiss scene – of _course_ there’s a big kiss scene – is no different.

It’s six in the evening by the time they actually start shooting; the rain is falling around them in sheets, cold against Lily’s hands whenever she takes the gloves off, and she can feel the beginnings of a headache where her hatpins are digging into her scalp.

They rehearse the scene a few times, while lights and boom mics and cameras are set up around them – and Danny, their enthusiastic and slightly terrifying director, keeps telling Lily to _feel_ it more, to really let the anger _show_ , to _not be afraid to get a little ugly_ – whatever the hell that means. James, to his credit, is on regular form; she can tell something’s off with him, there’s just something about the way his shoulders are hunched over and his face closes _everyone_ out, not just her, but he doesn’t let it affect his performance for even one take.

“I’m crazy about you, Susan,” he tells her, voice brimming with the kind of fervour that goes straight to the pit of her stomach. “You make my blood boil and I’m pretty sure we’d kill each other by Sunday but by _god_ it would be a glorious Saturday night.” Lily stares at him, eyes wide; she doesn’t know if she’s still in character, but she doesn’t think it’d make a difference – the words could just have easily been meant for her, were it not for the patent _improbability_ of it being James saying them . It’s a nice thought, but she knows better than to get lost in a daydream, especially when he tells her ,“I love you.”

The pause between them is full of a kind of resonance; Lily has to remind herself to breathe. “Took you long enough,” she says, the beginnings of a smile curling the edges of her mouth  – and then she leans forward at the same moment James shifts towards her, and they meet in the middle.

His lips are warm against hers, his hand curling around the back of her neck and her thumb stroking across his jaw. There’s something very specifically _moreish_ about kissing James – something indefinable, something about the way his stubble grazes against her skin and the way his lips fit against hers like they were sculpted for each other, and his _smell,_ part clean linen and part spiced after shave and all him, all _James -_

“Cut! Boom in the shot.”

They stutter apart, and Lily closes her eyes when she feels James drag his fingers along her cheekbone as he leans back, the movement either slower than usual or simply magnified in this new hyper-aware state of being she’s started to associate with being around him.

He’s already turning his back on her, reaching for his script – _like he needs it_ , he’s been word perfect since their first line run several hours ago, it’s petty and a little _obvious_ what he’s doing.

“Look, James, I’m –“ the words are out of her mouth before she has a chance to reconsider. “I was in a bad mood the day you asked me out last time, it – I didn’t mean to be rude.”

The apology – and the admission that comes with it – feels colossal to Lily, like she’s just unclipped her safety chord and hurled herself off the Empire State Building, but James…  James doesn’t even look fazed.

“It’s all right, Lily,” he says, and the way his tongue curls around her name – the way her heart stutters in response – is _not fair_. “We don’t need to be friends.”

*

When he tells her he doesn’t dislike her, a sick kind of fear wells up in her throat – she’s spent so many months studiously ignoring the reality of her feelings that to hear him give her reason to hope like this is more than a little unsettling. And then he tells her he doesn’t _care_ about her, which… Lily already knows.

If she slaps him harder the next they go for a take, well – it’s _acting,_ she’s making _character choices;_ the same choices, she’s sure, which prompt him to kiss her a little harder, too, like he wants to draw the poison from the air between them.

They wrap after that take;  Danny, apparently, has all the footage he needs. Lily winces internally, fighting hard not to let that become _he’s obviously not going to get a better performance out of you so he’s just sending you home_ in her mind, but the thought is there, terrifying and entirely unwelcome.

Lily packs up her props and brushes off her dress, keeping her head down as she hurries towards her trailer; so it isn’t until she’s already crossing the parking lot that she notices James has fallen into step beside her.

She slows down, blinking slowly and counting backwards from ten. When she opens her eyes, he’s still next to her, eyes fixed on the sidewalk, hands lightly curled into fists. Finally – they’re alone now, heading towards the actors’ trailers – she stops walking. So does he. The night sky is inky blue and tinged with the last reds of sunset; when Lily  glances upwards, she can see the first stars appearing.

Lily takes a deep breath, and forces herself to look at James. “What?”

He stares at her for another heartbeat, and then he’s pulling her closer and his lips are on hers and she’s drowning all over again, drowning in the truth of this kiss, drowning in the knowledge that he’s real, that _they’re_ real, that this is the only truth that matters, his mouth sliding against hers, and they’re _not friends_ and he _doesn’t care_ but it doesn’t matter when he’s kissing her like this, warm and addictive and full of a kind of promise  -

“No,” she says, pulling back, head shaking in tiny, jittery motions like she’s working hard to convince herself. “No, James –“

He follows her, leaning in, his hands sliding to her arms and holding her close. “What?”

“We’re not –“ Lily shakes her head again, feeling stupidly small. “We’re not doing this-“

James grazes his lips along the side of her ear; Lily shivers against him, the response too instinctive for her to do anything to disguise the effect he has on her. “I don’t want,” he mumbles, pressing a searing kiss to her cheek. “Anything,” Another, this time to the side of her nose; Lily’s eyes are closed tight, and her hands – her stupid, traitorous hands – are curled into his shirt. “Else,” He kisses her, almost gently, then pulls back and rests his forehead against hers. “Just this.”

“James, I…” Lily trails off, her throat suddenly dry. “I want –“

“I want you,” he echoes, and _fuck_ if that doesn’t send a bolt of fire shooting down her spine.

This time, it’s Lily who leans in, Lily who drags her lips along his, Lily who’s doing the kissing and James who’s being kissed – James who’s breathing heavily, his moaned response at the back of his throat doing all kinds of awful, wonderful things to Lily’s resolve.

_I don’t care about you._

And then – it hurts like a physical wound, the loss of contact – she’s pulling herself away, pressing her hands against James’s chest in an effort to put some space between them.

“No.”

“Lily –“ he reaches for her hand; pauses when she flinches. “I just want-“

“I know what you want,” she snaps, then, the fire burning brightly in her chest, the smoke filling her head and clouding all her senses. “I know what you _want,_ and –”

“Lily…” James raises an eyebrow, dubious; _god,_ if it were ever possible for her to hate him it would be now. “That wasn’t – someone who doesn’t _want to_ doesn’t kiss like that –“

“But _not like this-_ “ The words escape from her lips before she can do anything to stop them; Lily clamps her lips tightly together, suddenly faint.

James stares at her.

In the silence that follows, Lily swears her life flashes before her eyes, every mistake she’s ever made flashing up and paling into insignificance compared to this one, she’s going to die, she’s already dead, _fuck fuck_ _fuck_ –

“Not like…” James says slowly, disbelief colouring his voice. “Lily.”

“Nothing,” she forces out,  chest rising and falling rapidly in time with her shallow breaths. “ _Nothing,_ god –“

He tries to hold on to her wrist when she takes a step backwards, but then Lily’s backing away, running, almost tripping over her own feet as she stumbles into the relative safety of her trailer.

*

James doesn’t follow her. Of course he doesn’t, because _he doesn’t care about her_.

Lily checks her phone every two minutes on the drive home, but James doesn’t text her. Of course he doesn’t, because _he doesn’t care about her._

Hours later, when she’s lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and wondering if he’s doing the same, she has to tell herself again; he’s not lying awake thinking about her, he’s not losing sleep over her, he’s not wasting any more thoughts than really necessary on her, because _he doesn’t care about her._

When she gets up to get a glass of water, Lily tastes something not unlike bile at the back of her throat.

_He doesn’t care about her._

It’s taken her years, but Lily thinks she finally understands what that means.

Stupid, really, to waste so much energy on something James has made clear from day one – _It was stupid…. We’re done – Is this going to happen again? – No –_ he’s never wanted anything other than the fleeting, dangerous thrill of kissing when there’s no one around to watch them, this sick game of ignoring each other all day and then pulling her into his bed like he never wants her to be anywhere else.

_He doesn’t care about her._

And she’s done. Done chasing something she doesn’t want, not when it’s like this, one part bone-melting desire and two parts hatred disguised as ambivalence.  There was a time – a few weeks, maybe, when the soft look in his eyes seemed to say something else, when the warmth of his arms around her felt like safety, when he refused to leave her bedside until she’d eaten all her soup or when he asked her out to the movies, all casual boyish charm – when she’d thought different. When even the idea of something more than what they had  terrified her enough to send her running for the hills –

Somewhere between then and now, James has moved on. Has _stopped caring_ ; has stopped waiting for her to trust him enough to jump just at the moment Lily has let herself drop into free-fall. And now she’s falling, falling too rapidly to hang on to even a shred of dignity. It’s almost ironic; she’d laugh, if she didn’t feel so much like vomiting.

*

Lily finally manages to pass out three hours and several glasses of wine later; but she wakes up feeling less rested than ever. They don’t even kiss in her dreams anymore – he _holds her hand,_ and tells her she’s beautiful, and leans in to wipe the hot chocolate foam off of her lips, gentle and close and genuine.

So she does something she’s not done since college, something that breaks every work ethic she’s ever stuck to; she calls in sick, closes the blinds in her bedroom, and takes two sleeping pills.  It’s self-indulgent and a little teenage, like the time she locked herself In the basement for six hours and ate ice cream because Shawn Williams turned her down for the Sadie Hawkins dance; there’s something about this kind of rejection, unfamiliar to Lily after so many years of brief flings and casual dates, that feels raw and tender, like a sunburn that’s starting to peel.

*

He’s waiting for her the next day, leaning against her trailer door with his hands shoved into his pockets – and for about five seconds, Lily indulges her most ridiculous notions, lets herself believe that he’s here to ask her to this weird old movie theatre, that she’s the indifferent one and he cares too much –

But _he doesn’t care about her._

She pushes past him with a mumbled “Hey,” and the touch of his shoulder against hers is cold.

They go back to ignoring each other after that, and after a few days Lily doesn’t feel like she’s about to faint every time he so much as looks at her; by the time they get to the wrap party, she’s almost perfected it, the art of looking at him and not feeling anything.

It’s a subtle shift in her mind, actively not caring rather than the falsified Not Caring that was only ever a way of getting his attention; but it’s become vital to her survival. If she doesn’t _care_ , he can’t hurt her; and if he can’t hurt her, then maybe she can begin to pull herself free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short-ish chapter, because I'm bone tired and found this one a bit of a bitch to write. SORRY. If it's any consolation, I started this fic because there was a scene I wanted to write for Episode 6, so...watch this space.


	6. magic everywhere you go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY about that unplanned two-day hiatus, Finals got the better of me. But I'm done with my Shakespeare exam and what better way to celebrate than FIVE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN words of cheesy trope fic, amirite?
> 
> This was probably my favourite chapter to write, mostly because it let me go a little nuts with the jily (the other Jily. The Original Jily) so I mean.... Enjoy? There's a bunch of references in here, some accidental, others not, to movies and books and THINGS yeah it's 5.30 in the morning enjoy the chapter I'm going to stop talking now.
> 
> Set before and during the filming of the Episode 6 project. 5713 words.
> 
> RATED T for language and some pretty detailed kissing but nothing beyond that.

Two weeks pass, then three; slowly, Lily feels herself begin to knit back together again. Little pieces come back first, like going for a run along the beach early one morning just to watch the sun come up; and then the bigger things fall into place too, and eventually she can go to the Coffee Loft without having to convince herself not to wimp out again for an hour every time. She still avoids the internet when she can, though the ‘shipping’ seems to have calmed down a little recently. Pam, thinking herself _oh so hilarious,_ sends Lily a link to a thread on some celebrity gossip forum (two things strike Lily as odd at this; the first, that anyone’s still using _forums._ The second, that she’s a _celebrity_ ).  There are hundreds of posts, some more ridiculous than others, though Lily finds herself coming back again and again to those people who seem to think she and James are a thing of the past, that an entire secret relationship and explosive break-up were carried out without anyone’s knowledge – which, well. They’re not _right;_ but they come a little closer than she likes to admit.

Except, of course – there was no relationship, there was no break-up, there was never a definite _ending_ and so Lily is left feeling like she’s still holding her breath, like there should be some grand gesture or devastating final farewell to round them out, like one day soon she’ll walk away from James and _know_ that it’s the last time. The fantasy plays itself in her mind over and over again; who confronts whom changes depending on her mood, and  some days, she even fabricates a happy ending, just to shake things up a little, but one thing remains constant – they are always, always in the rain.

*

“Which just goes to show,” Lily says, stirring her Bloody Mary and eyeing the cocktail umbrella with a modicum of mistrust. “Never become an actress with a track record, because that shit will screw you up.” She pauses, and looks up for the first time in a few minutes; opposite her, Anna is looking a little shell-shocked. “God. Sorry. I’ll shut up.”

“No, no…” Anna lifts her shoulders in what is clearly supposed to be an encouraging gesture. “You need to talk? I’m here to listen, okay?”

“This was supposed to be my fun night out,” Lily groans, taking a sip of her drink and feeling an odd kind of satisfaction when she tastes the tomato. _I can eat tomatoes. Point to Everett._

“We can still have fun,” Anna tells her enthusiastically, the effect only heightened by her giant fruity cocktail with three kinds of sparklers. “You want to go have fun? You want to go dance? There’s this amazing eighties roller disco I found the other day, you’ll love it, it’s _so_ much fun!”

“Not the most coordinated girl in the world,” Lily says, and then feels instantly guilty when she sees Anna’s face drop. There’s something about her, equal parts her age and her British accent and her wide doe-eyed  smile, that makes Lily feel like she’s kicked a puppy. “Sorry. Some other time!”

“Well, you choose something, then. Anything! I don’t mind!”

“I don’t…” Lily hesitates. What she wanted more than anything was to sit on Pam’s couch and drink three bottles of red wine and moan about stupid _Porter_ and his stupid _hair_ for a few hours until everything stopped feeling so miserable.  Pam, though, is not…. Not the ideal person to talk to about this, really. Lily doesn’t think she could bear the instant drive for match-making that would possess her best friend;  she wouldn’t be surprised if Pam refused to let her _sleep_ until she talked to James.

Sitting around all evening feeling sorry for herself, though, isn’t an option; Lily knows she’s spent too long shutting her thoughts down and pretending they’re not there. It’s all part of her new quest for self-fulfilment (how LA of her; her brothers would never let her live it down if she started talking about _self-fulfilment)._ Bottling things up is what got her into this mess. And besides, it’s not like she just has _one_ friend. Anna – fun Anna, bubbly Anna, no-longer-an-intern-but-still-almost-aggressively-keen Anna – was the first to respond to Lily’s plea for company on a Tuesday night; and here they are, drinking and talking and getting increasingly caught in an hour-long Conversation About James.

“I just – “ Lily closes her eyes briefly; she can _hear_ herself start in on him again, can tell that her voice changes too, becomes more – pointed, somehow – but she can’t bring herself to stop. “I just don’t get how he can be so nice one day, and then such a _jerk_ the next, like he only ever wanted to – you know –“

When she blanches, Anna’s face twitches into a smirk. “What?”

 “…Hang out,” Lily settles on, feeling her cheeks grow warm in the dim lighting.

Anna lets out a peal of laughter. “I’m only five years younger than you, Lily, _god._ Spit it out.”

Lily scowls, and takes another sip of her drink. “ _Anyway,_ ” she says pointedly, ignoring the way Anna has to press her hand to her mouth to stop a giggle from escaping. “I don’t know, it got all – messed up.”

There is a long pause, during which Lily finishes her drink and manages to convince herself not to get another _just_ yet; she pours herself a glass of water instead.

”Um,” Anna says  tentatively, like she’s worried Lily might snap her head off at any moment. “Sorry if this is totally wrong, or something, but – maybe you could, you know, _un-mess it_?”

“No, _don’t ,_ Anna…” Lily groans, turning away and waving the bartender to bring her another; screw responsible. “Don’t do that, it wouldn’t do anything, you know it won’t work, it’s – it’s _Porter,_ he doesn’t _care_ , nothing I do would even – I don’t even like him that much, _god,_ it just got weird and, and confusing, I’m past it – “

“Mmh,” Anna nods seriously, and Lily’s having a hard time distinguishing pointed sarcasm from British class. “Sounds like it.”

“You got me drunk,” she mumbles defensively, nursing her refill like she’s hoping to draw strength from it. “It doesn’t _count_.”

*

The next morning – with a hangover headache that threatens to blind her when she opens her curtains and blinks into the midday sun – when Lily retrieves her phone from where it landed, inexplicably, in a potted fern last night, she finds herself staring at three missed calls and five new messages.

For a full ten seconds, she feels terror creep under her skin. _Who did I call last night and what did I say? Oh, fuck –_

And then, steeling herself against the worst, she opens her inbox. Three texts from Anna, in various stages of illegibility, one from Peggy, telling her to check her voicemail, and… One from _Porter, J._

**_They send you the script for Julia’s next movie yet? J._ **

Feeling altogether too fragile to deal with the text – why he wants to know, why he _cares,_ what it means or if even means anything – Lily clicks away, too quickly. She decides to go back to bed for a few hours before she phones Peggy; she can’t be trusted to make any kind of decision in this state.

Of course, when she _does_ call her agent, Lily is entirely unsurprised to find out that Julia –Julia who she’s worked with so many times now, Julia who gave Lily her first real break, Julia who has always championed her and who, apparently, isn’t done yet – wants her on board.

“This could be really good for you,” Peggy says, getting straight to the point when Lily arrives for a meeting three days later. “It’s a mature part, in a serious feature…. I know we like YA and I’m not going to rule it out, but this could establish you as someone serious, something more than another breezy comedy or  fluffy romance.”

Lily nods slowly; all of this is true.

“You said you wanted to work with women directors. Julia’s a woman.”

Lily suppresses an eye roll; while true, she somehow doubts that this is why Peggy is so keen to sign her on to _Let’s Say We Did._

“And…” Peggy hesitates. “You _know_ there’s a loyal audience that wants to see you and James in another movie together, the buzz around _Smith and Jones_ is pretty big right now and we need to capitalise on that –“

“Okay,” Lily says, shocking both her agent and herself.

“What?”

Lily shrugs, avoiding eye contact and fiddling with a bracelet. “I’ll take a meeting. Send me the script. Set up a call.”

When she leaves Peggy’s offices half an hour later, Lily checks her phone out of habit. No new messages, and James’s text is still impossibly hard to ignore.

She’s not taking this job because it sounds like he wants to see her again. She’s _not_.

*

Something is different, this time.

It’s subtle, a gradual shift in the quality of the spaces between them; the first few days are awkward as anything, and the first time Lily mentions a band she saw last summer when her little brother came to stay, she half expects him to ignore her completely. But then James is mumbling out a reply without quite catching Lily’s eye, says he heard their new single on the radio, and does she think they’re moving towards a more mature sound for their third album –

They get better at it, slowly. Stop avoiding each other during lunch breaks, stop mulishly sticking to their _assigned area_ of the Coffee Loft, stop filling the pauses between takes with loaded silences and learn to talk to each other instead. Once it starts, Lily finds it almost laughable, how much she used to dread sitting in silence with James – they have _plenty_ to talk about, as it turns out.  Audition horror stories and anecdotes about  favourite bands soon give way to childhood vacations, awkward encounters with people back home who somehow expect them to _act_ more famous, fending off strangely _specific_ questions about their homes on Twitter… They have five years’ worth of awkward silences to make up on, and if Lily sometimes loses her train of thought because James has rolled his shirtsleeves up, _well –_

It’s fine. It’s _fine,_ she has tons of hot friends and it doesn’t have to make anything weird.

Are they becoming friends, now?

Lily probes at the thought cautiously, wary despite herself of opening up that old hurt that she’s never quite put a name to; and is surprised to find that it’s okay,  actually, _better_ than okay, being friends with James Porter.

He’s waiting for her outside her trailer when she finishes getting out of costume one night. This isn’t unusual, really; they’ll often carry on a conversation about TV shows or parking or beach spots all day, snatches of interactions between each take, and then wrap for the day with something still left to discuss. They’ve been talking about _Buffy_ today – Lily’s insisting that James watch it, _it’ll change everything you’ve ever thought about stories about teenage girls,_ and he’s been put off by the cheesy effects and too many forced viewings of the musical episode when he was a kid. She’s sure that’s why he’ s waiting for her now.

“Just start at the beginning,” she tells him, half-smiling as she turns to lock her trailer. “Give it six episodes. I _swear,_ the nineties vampires don’t even bother you once you get used to them.”

“It’s my birthday next week,” James says, and Lily is momentarily thrown; she fumbles with her keys, ducking her head slightly to hide behind her hair as she takes this in. “I’m having a thing on Saturday. Sirius is in charge of the theme, so it’ll be amazing. There might be baby photos.”

“Baby photos?” Lily asks, wasting time by making sure her keys are safely zipped away in her handbag; she hears James laugh quietly.

“It’s a definite possibility.”

She looks up, then, and something about the way James is watching her, all lanky limbs and casual smile and that slight stoop to his posture – it’s endearing in a way that makes her want to say yes, even though she shouldn’t, even though she’s been woken up by _kissing dreams_ three times this week and really shouldn’t trust herself around James with _alcohol –_ Lily wants to go.

“Sure,” she says quickly, before she can change her mind. “Yeah, I’d love to!”

James’s face changes from forced nonchalance to genuine relief and back to a teasing half-smile for Lily to really process it; and then he’s raising his eyebrows at her. “I haven’t _invited_ you yet, Everett.”

 Lily feels her cheeks heat up, but manages to keep up her side of the game, flipping her hair back over one shoulder. “Oh, so you didn’t want me to come?” When James doesn’t answer immediately, she takes a step towards him, the challenge to sweet to resist. “Just thought you’d come over here and impress me with your weekend plans?”

“Maybe,” James tells her, a smirk etched across his face. “Maybe I was gearing up to an invite, maybe not. You’re so _presumptuous_ suddenly. I think fame’s gone to your head.”

“Fame,” Lily snorts. “Please.”

“I’m only inviting you for the publicity,” James tells her, utterly deadpan; the speed at which his face changes to a mask of insincerity would throw Lily if she hadn’t had five years’ worth of practise. “What, did you think I _want_ you there, or something?”

She has to laugh at that, pushing past James with a light shove against his chest. “Fuck off, Porter.”

“See you Saturday!”

*

The minute Lily shows up at James’s house on Saturday, she feels like going home.

The house is crowded full of people she doesn’t know, or – worse – knows in that vague, we-probably-have-mutual-friends-and-tangentially-worked-together-once way that everyone seems to know everyone else in this city; there are too many faces Lily vaguely recognises, but doesn’t know well enough to start a conversation with.  She makes her way through the hallway and out into the garden, nodding her head slightly to the beat, looking around for somewhere to put her coat or – more pressingly – get a drink. The theme seems to be _magical frat party;_ Lily sees more kegs and red solo cups than she’s ever seen since that one awful teen pilot that was her first paid credit never got picked up, but there are also cobwebs and a few broomsticks hanging in the trees.  There’s a _band,_ too, holy shit – two guys and a girl in hilarious approximations of punk gear leaping around on a stage that seems to be constructed mostly out of beer crates stacked up on the lawn – and it’s here that Lily gravitates to, more out of curiosity than anything else.

The music isn’t bad, it’s just _loud –_ and Lily lets out an entirely _uncool_ shriek when some kid in an old letterman jacket throws his beer over her shoes – but eventually, after someone hands her a beer and points to where there’s a whole bucket full of chilled bottles waiting, she finds herself getting into it. It’s fun and a little bit like being back in college, and it’s okay that she hasn’t actually seen James yet; it’s dark out here and no one seems to know or care about her name, and Lily feels like she could dance with strangers for hours.

Eventually, though, the band take a break, and someone sets the sound system to a Mumford track, killing the mood in seconds; disorientated and a little sticky, Lily stumbles out of the crowd and finds a bench to sink down on.

“Hey!”

Suddenly James is standing in front of her, flushed in the face and with his hair deliciously ruffled and his whole body apparently humming with energy; as Lily gapes up at him, she can see him _bouncing on the balls of his feet._ Jesus Christ.

“Hi,” she grins, half-waving and then immediately cursing herself for it. James doesn’t seem to mind, though, pulling at her hands until she stands up and he can wrap his arms around her in a tight, slightly sloppy hug.

“You came,” he crows, and now Lily’s glad of the hug, because it means he can’t see her face when she hears how  _dumb_ and _happy_ he sounds to see her. _Get a grip._ “Having fun?”

“Great party,” Lily nods against his shoulder, a little weakly. “Love the band.”

“Si’s pals from back home,” James tells her; they’re still hugging, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of this. “Good, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You had a drink?”

“Yeah.”

He pulls back then, gives her a slightly teasing smile, like he’s waiting for her to catch up. “Want another one?”

Lily stares at him; he seems to be swaying slightly on the spot, and his eyes are a little unfocused, but he’s still pulling whole sentences together so he can’t be _that_ far gone. “Sure.”

“Come on,” James tells her, his fingers lacing through hers like it’s the most natural thing in the world as they make their way back into the crowded house. Lily can feel the blood rushing through her ears, and she wonders if he’s aware of it, too, the stomach-tilting _ease_ with which their hands fit together.

He leads her towards a cocktail bar, and Lily quickly pulls her hand free when she recognises who’s mixing drinks; they haven’t seen each other in a few years, but he’s still as drop-dead gorgeous and unmistakeably _Sirius_ as she remembered. He’s leaning on the bar, his chin resting on his hands, teeth impossibly white when he throws back his head to laugh at something the wild-haired girl talking to him says.

“Hey, hey,” James laughs, nudging his way to the front of the line with an easy grin. “Hey, Si, make us a drink, yeah?”

Sirius looks around – and grins, eyes landing on Lily. “Lily,” he smiles, holding out a hand and shaking hers vigorously. “Good to see you!”

“And you,” Lily half-laughs, a little too aware of the few stares they’re drawing. It’s possible  her _recognisability factor_ only increases once she’s standing next to James. “Great party.”

“Thanks… What can I get you?”

Lily glances at the cartoon menu, and points at one of the cocktails, a lime and vodka concoction that sounds dangerously good. Sirius nods his approval, and starts mixing; Lily stands back a little, and watches him with a small smile. He’s clearly no expert, but makes up for it with enthusiasm. James lands a flying spray of lime juice to the eyes and starts blinking rapidly, and Sirius barks out a laugh. “Sorry, sorry, mind your eyes, incoming…”

He pours the drink with a flourish, adding a few slices of lime and two straws before slinging it at Lily.

“Thanks.”

“You look lovely,” Sirius tells her conversationally, and Lily almost chokes on the first sip of lime. “Lovely, lovely Lily. Hey! That’d be an _awesome_ song.”

“Thanks,” Lily repeats, slightly dumbly; Sirius is leaning slightly towards her, his eyes very bright.

“Lovely Lily, meter maid…” he starts, then stops with a grimace. “Shit, that’s not...right.”

“Good effort,” Lily giggles. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“It’ll be in the papers tomorrow,” Sirius promises her. “ _Lily Everett inspires musician, launches epic career of Brooklyn-born Sirius Bellamy –_ “

“Got a ring to it,” Lily nods, faux-thoughtfully sipping on her drink; Sirius winks at her, flipping the hair slightly out of his eyes, and she feels herself melt into another giggle.

“Lily,” James announces suddenly, placing himself squarely between her and the bar; dimly, Lily is aware of Sirius letting out a badly-disguised snort. “Lily, hey, there’s someone I want you to meet –“

He pulls a girl closer, and Lily vaguely recognises her from the horrific pity-party induced by James’s selfie from the _Syntax_ party. “Hi,” she says vaguely, trying to sound as though she’d never seen this girl before in her life. “I’m Lily.”

“This is my sister,” James said, and Lily nods as though this is totally new information. “Audrey. She’s an actress!”

_“Sort of_ an actress,” Audrey insists, grinning when James pokes at the dimple in her cheek.

Lily smiles, shaking Audrey’s hand. “Are you just down here for the party?”

“Yep,” Audrey grins. “Wanted to celebrate with my big brother! You’re gonna have to stop doing so many movies with him, Lily, he barely comes home any more…”

“Oh?” Lily asks casually, giving James a smile when he pulls a face. “Well, I can try, it’s _his_ people that keep sending my agent the scripts…”

“Totally not my doing,” James announces, somewhat brashly. “It’s the same people sending us _both t_ he scripts, Everett, don’t flatter yourself.”

Lily rolls her eyes; Sirius laughs into his drink; Audrey looks between her brother and Lily, seeming to take a moment to gather her convictions.

“It’s really good to meet you,” she tells Lily, with a sidelong glance at James. “Finally! We all heard so much about you.”

It’s almost perfectly timed; James has just taken a huge gulp from a recently-opened bottle of beer, and Lily almost wishes she had a camera to record the way he pauses, chokes, and lets out a strangled sort of groan before clamping a hand to his mouth. Audrey and Sirius are both silent, Lily suspects in part because they don’t want to spoil the moment; finally, James manages to swallow, and takes a deep breath before turning on Audrey to scowl at her.

“What?” His sister asks, the picture of innocence with her brown locks falling perfectly around her cheeks. “James?”

James raises a finger, points at her once, and then flounces away. “Come on, Lily.”

By now, Sirius is half-leaning against the bar, doubled-over with silent laughter; Lily manages to muster up a scathing look before following James out into the hallway.

*

If Lily was worried about any residual awkwardness from Audrey’s barbed insinuations, those fears soon disappear once they find their way into the lounge. Someone’s drawn all the curtains and turned on a huge disco ball, dousing the room in darkness and bursts of coloured light, and the music is turned up so loud that Lily can feel the bass thudding up through her legs.

James turns to her once they reach the room; somehow, there is no question that he takes her hands in his and pulls her close, bringing their hips flush up against each other. Lily curls one hand around the back of his neck,  smiling a little giddily when she feels James’s fingers pressing against the cut-out portion of her dress, the warmth seeping into her skin and radiating out from the small of her back. They move slowly, in a rhythm that totally disregards the beat of the music but seems somehow just _right;_ and Lily might be more drunk than she’d bargained on, because somehow her gaze gets stuck somewhere around James’s mouth and she finds it impossibly hard to look away.

Neither of them are saying anything, and somehow an unspoken taboo prevents them from getting any closer than this, their hips moving together and their faces impossibly close but not actually touching. Lily wants to _touch_ , wants to bridge the gap between them and let herself give in to the low and insistent _want_ that sits low in her stomach, but she doesn’t, not yet, they’re not there yet, somehow both of them are sticking to a rulebook they never read – though she notices that his fingers are carding through the ends of her hair, the motion both casually harmless and dangerouslyintimate.

When the music thuds to a sudden stop, neither of them stop moving; Lily lets her eyes fall shut, and leans her head against James’s chest, and it’s stupid to be thinking of some _movie_ they did _years ago_ at a time like this, but – she swears she can still hear the music, even as the room thins out and the crowds disperse. Eventually, though, more out of some instinctive impulse than any reasoned-out thought, she opens her eyes; and looks up to find James already staring at her, his pupils wide and dark and close, closer than she thinks they’ve ever been –

He’s the one to lean forwards first, but Lily raises herself up on tiptoes and catches him off-guard, her lips opening his, her hands curling into the front of his shirt with all the urgency they’ve been holding in since she arrived three hours ago.

*

“Stay,” he murmurs against her ear, what feels like hours later. “Stay.”

Lily doesn’t open her eyes; doesn’t dare break whatever spell that’s holding them together, curled up on one of James’s laughably big leather couches, oblivious to the party going on around them. James huffs quietly, dropping his head to press his lips to the crook of her neck; Lily lets out a sound that at any other time of day she’d be _horrified_ at herself for, and raises a hand to card through his hair, holding him close.

“Lily…” James pulls back, and presses a quick kiss to her nose; Lily opens her eyes, already giggling. He smiles softly, kissing her again, his lips brushing gently against hers. “Stay. I’ve gotta say bye to people, but –“

Okay. So the party’s sort of…ended around them. Lily groans slightly – _god,_ she hopes James can trust everyone he invited or they are in _so much shit._ He doesn’t seem too worried, though, or at least not about that; he’s still staring at her with those dangerously warm eyes,  his hands cupping her cheeks.

“Lil….” The short form of her name sounds too good on his tongue; Lily didn’t know she could be attracted to a _syllable,_ but she’s learning all kinds of things today. Almost without realising it, she finds herself nodding; James huffs out a kind of relieved sigh, and slowly pulls away, standing up and running a hand through his hair. “Be back,” he promises her – and then lopes off, presumably to go  actually, you know, i _nteract with his birthday party guests._

Lily stays on the couch, curled in on herself, listening to the way she can feel her pulse jump in her wrist, like her skin is somehow stretched thinner. She should go. She should really, really go, because this is exactly where they were a few months ago, a few _years_ ago – it’s almost laughable, their lack of development on from this one point – but Lily doesn’t…. _want_ to.

Besides. It’s different, now. They’re friends, she thinks, she hopes, sort of. They’re not going to get awkward, or start hating each other on principle, or any of the shit which messed everything up so badly the first time, and the second. Lily usually deal in clichés but apparently James just brings it out in her. _Maybe this’ll be third time lucky._

*

When she wakes up, sunlight is streaming in through the half-open blinds, and she’s curled against James’s with his arm thrown around her waist, the sheets tangled somewhere around their legs. Lily becomes aware of two things very quickly. First, that James is naked to the waist, her face pressed against his bare chest. Second, that she’s fully dressed.

_O…kay._

Slowly, the night before starts coming back in bits and pieces. The party. Sirius, Audrey, the band. Dancing with James, kissing James, pushing James back onto the mattress and unbuttoning his shirt, and –

_Laughter._ More than anything else, Lily remembers the laughter, wonderful, stupid, delirious laughter – both of them struggling to keep their eyes open but trying to kiss anyway, giggling like teenagers when he fumbled over the zipper to her dress for a few minutes, ending up lying flat on their backs and talking aimlessly at the ceiling, voices too loud in the empty room. Falling asleep slowly, in stages, until eventually they were just mumbling out half-slurred words at each other, his lips pressing against her hair at apparently random intervals, her hand drawing circles over his hipbones, both of them laughing in the middle of a yawn when he squirms, suddenly ticklish but too tired to really do anything about it.

Lily doesn’t know what she’s feeling; if she’s even feeling anything, still half-asleep and warm with drowsiness. Slowly, she pulls herself into consciousness, inching out from under James’s hand and scooting over to the edge of the bed, keeping her eyes deliberately fixed on the floor as she retrieves her heels and pulls them on. James is stirring slightly behind her, she can hear his breathing change as he starts to wake up, and that spurns her on, until finally she’s got her shoes on and her purse is in her hand and her coat is slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” she says quietly, standing up and walking around the bed until she’s standing right next to James. “Hey.”

He groans, still half-asleep – Lily bites back a smile – and slowly comes to, his eyes blinking heavily a few times before focusing on her. Immediately, a smile curls up around the corners of his mouth, and he reaches out to catch her hand with his. “Morning.”

“Listen, I’ve gotta go…”

James doesn’t react instantly; just freezes for a moment, and then nods slowly, his thumb stroking aimlessly along the ridges of her fingers. “Okay,” he says quietly, sounding still half-dazed. “Okay.”

“I had a lot of fun,” Lily says, hating the way the words sound hollow to her ears. “And it’s really just, I have to go, um, my friend’s in town and she wants to do lunch, it’s – otherwise, I wouldn’t just –“

James doesn’t respond to that; the unspoken doubt  is loud in the silence between them.

“I’ll see you at work?” Lily says, trying to inject as much sincerity as she can into her words; she hates it a little, leaving like this, but the alternative is…impossible. “James?”

“See you at work,” James echoes, sounding distant already; but he kisses her back when she leans in and presses her lips against his, their noses bumping together and his hair tickling her forehead. They kiss for a long moment, and when Lily pulls back, she leans her forehead against his for another moment, breathing him in, committing the way his thumb is etching tiny circles against her hand to memory.

“Bye,” she says finally, standing up and slowly pulling her hand free; James is sitting up now, the sheets draped over his hips, and the way his hair is sticking up in tufts only makes Lily want to kiss him again – so she turns her back, and closes the bedroom door behind her as she goes.

*

“Cut! Just one more and it’ll be a wrap.”

James’s lips are warm against hers, his hands in her hair holding her close – Lily swallows a moan and sways forwards, her hand on his wrist urging him on –

And then, too late – _way_ too late, holy shit – awareness sets back in. Numbly, she strokes his arm, not wanting to pull away but needing him to _realise;_ James pulls back slightly, his eyes blinking open to stare at her with something like wonder. Their lips are still close, close enough that Lily doesn’t think it looks too obvious when they kiss again for another heartbeat before finally pulling away from each other.

Lily tucks her hair behind her ears, and glances at James; they’ve fallen back into the trap of not speaking to each other, and it’s making the pauses between takes feel as long as they ever did. She wants to try, wants to at least get back to _small talk_ if nothing else, because if there’s one thing she thinks she’s learned, it’s that miscommunication is what got them into this mess in the first place.

He hands her a blanket, and they stand like that, in a silence that isn’t so much awkward as anticipatory; somehow, Lily knows this is her chance to say…something, anything, to stop what feels like inevitability from falling into place and pulling them onto separate paths for good.

“It was nice working with you this time,” she says, and James turns to give her half a smile; Lily wonders if he can hear what she’s been trying to say for six days now, if she only knew how. So far she’s got two words, and all they sound like are _I’m sorry._

“Thanks,” he mutters, not really looking at her – Lily doesn’t know why, but it seems like he’s made his peace with something, like he’s leaving.

“You know, I’m bummed we never got to do an eighties movie together,” she adds, when the silence grows too loud and she’s in too much danger of asking _why does this feel like goodbye._ “Guy shows up at the end, boom box overhead….” James smiles, and she has to force herself to keep going, not to veer off into _we just slept, and it was the best night of my life._ “…Grand gesture with an original song _.”_ _Isn’t that grand enough?_

_“_ Yeah,” James says quietly, his eyes warm; Lily finds it hard to look away. “John Hughes was a rad dude.”

And it doesn’t matter that they’ve barely spoken to each other; it doesn’t matter that he got his eighties references mixed up; hell, it doesn’t even matter that they’re done after today, that Lily wraps tonight and he’ll be carrying on for another week. What matters is the way his eyes crinkle around the edges, what matters is the feeling Lily gets at the back of her throat, like she’s in on some huge secret that she’s not allowed to tell yet, what matters is the fact that Mary may be saying goodbye, but Lily… Lily isn’t so sure.

It happens then, between the sixth and the seventh take. He pulls the blanket away from around her shoulders when the rain starts up again, his fingers stuttering around the nape of her neck, and Lily knows.

She doesn’t know how, or when, or even _what_ it is she wants exactly.

But it’s going to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEFORE ANYONE ASKS (not that anyone will, I just want to establish this): The band playing is Remus, Peter and Tonks trying to be cool and radical and change the world through the power of punk but mostly just playing trashy songs together. The girl at the bar is possibly-second-cousin Bella, because I say so. Yes, SIrius barking out a laugh is still my favourite thing to ever happen in any fandom, ever. You may have spotted the When Harry Met Sally line (there, and the bastardised Spike/Buffy line, and...possibly others that I can't remember but made me chuckle as I wrote them. You may also have spotted the endless talk about hands in hair. Because apparently when you watch Episode 6 ten times in a row, those are the things you pick up on. Anyway. Last chapter tomorrow, because I'm determined to wrap this up before getting into Audrey and Henry. GOOD NIGHT.


	7. yesterday you asked me something i thought you knew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god. I don't even know. This chapter got away from me a lot more than I intended. Feat. a change in POV, a few time jumps, and copious amounts of gooey feelings.
> 
> This chapter is set one day, roughly a year, and then a few years later, after the events of Episode 7. Two moire times Lily and James don't kiss in the rain, and the obligatory "...and one time they did."
> 
> RATED T for language and I guess making out? 6391 words........I told you it got away from me.

**I.**

When James wakes early the next morning, he’s alone; the curtains are half-open and the sun is barely up, but the sheets on Lily’s side of the bed are cold. She’s gone.

For ten whole seconds, he wonders if he dreamt all of last night, if she was ever really there or if he still hasn’t seen her in six weeks – but then he sees the two empty glasses sitting on his bedside table, dregs of red wine still staining the stem. He didn’t dream her; she was here; and now she’s gone.

James lets himself fall back against his pillows, stomach churning. He feels – stupid, somehow. Like he’s right back where he started, looking for feelings that just aren’t _there_ between takes and angry kisses and quick, meaningless nights (he never quite got the hang of _meaningless,_ anyway). He’s just arrived at anger through a thoroughly miserable detour through self-pity when the bedroom door swings open –

And there’s Lily. Pink-cheeked and tousle-haired and in one of his shirts, and she’s holding a tray of coffees.

“Hi,” she says, a little breathless. James stares at her, feeling altogether _stupid_ – not to mention stupidly happy – because she’s still here, she’s still here and smiling at him and she doesn’t hate him – Lily sets the tray down carefully, wincing when she knocks his alarm to the floor. “Sorry, sorry –“

James cuts her off, grabbing onto her wrists and pulling until she falls on top of him, laughing helplessly, and their first kiss is a little undignified and he gets a face-full of her hair and he’s pretty sure he has morning breath; but Lily is humming against his lips, her eyes crinkling with a kind of affection that’s so warm it makes James forget how to breathe.

“Hi,” Lily mumbles, her lips forming the word against his; James traces the curve and dip of her cupid’s bow with his tongue, and feels her shiver against him.

“Good morning,” he smiles, then, leaning back and meeting her eyes properly. “You made me breakfast?”

Lily rolls her eyes. “It’s just coffee,” she tells him, giggling a little when he pokes at her ribs. “And it’s not _for you,_ I made coffee for myself and there was some left over –“

“Sure,” James nods seriously, sitting up and passing one of the cups to her before taking one for himself. “Thanks, anyway.”

Lily scowls into her coffee – or tries to, anyway, though she’s not doing too well disguising the smile. James grins at her, taking his first sip.

He pauses.

_Oh god._

Lily’s watching him curiously, her eyes following the rapid play of emotions flitting across his face – horror, guilt, an attempt at a smile, more horror – and, slowly, she starts to frown. “What?”

James shrugs, finally swallowing and taking a deep breath in. “Nothing,” he tells her, half-wincing over the word. “Nothing, seriously.”

Lily’s got that look in her eyes again, the little crinkle over her nose she always gets when she thinks he’s being an idiot. “James.”

“It’s nothing!”

“Is it –“ she pauses, and James sees her put two and two together. “Is it the _coffee_?”

“The coffee is – _great,_ ” James insists, and he debates taking another sip to prove his point but then can’t go through with it; he sets his cup down gingerly. “See, look, I’m saving it so I don’t drink it all at once.”

Lily arches an eyebrow, and he flushes; she can read him too completely, and he can’t act nearly half as well as he thought he could, for her to believe him now. Refusing to break eye contact, she raises her own cup to her lips and takes a sip.

There is a long, strained pause, during which Lily doesn’t move so much as a muscle and James feels oddly like he’s on trial – and then Lily’s face drops into abject horror. “Oh my god,” she says slowly, shoving the cup away from her and turning back to James with a sort of half-fluttered hand gesture that he thinks might be an apology. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

James breathes out, then already feeling like laughing again, and also like he wants to kiss her – but, honestly, that’s been a pretty constant emotion recently. “It’s okay,” he tells her gently, lips twitching into a smile. “It’s a really old machine, if you don’t know what you’re doing then it’s easy to get something wrong…”

”Who gets _coffee_ wrong?” Lily moans, hiding her face behind a tangle of hair. “It’s _coffee_.”

“Hey, hey,” James laughs, openly now, tipping two fingers under her chin so she’ll look at him. “I’ll go make us some more, okay?”

Lily half-shrugs, a reluctant smile twisting her lips. “Okay.”

*

Half an hour later, she’s showered and dressed, and James is ready in the kitchen with a freshly-made pot of espresso - and a batch of gluten-free croissants he _might_ have bought and frozen a few weeks ago.

“You’re the best,” Lily tells him seriously, taking a bite of flaky pastry and rolling her eyes deliriously. “Oh my god. Heaven.” James grins, sliding a cup of coffee across to her without a word; Lily takes a cautious sip, and then flushes. “God, that’s amazing. What did you _do_?”

“It’s just coffee,” James shrugs. “Guess I’m used to the machine.”

“Next time you’re teaching me,” Lily says authoritatively; and then her hands are suddenly very busy reaching for a pot of jelly and a butter knife, clattering around with her tea spoon and two sugar cubes, filling the suddenly-loud silence between them with noise.

James just watches her, heart so full of _light_ that he’s not sure if he’s about to burst or if he’s in danger of floating away. “Next time,” he nods eventually, forcing the words out and giving Lily a wide smile when she meets his eye. “Sure.”

She returns his smile slowly, and James thinks If he wasn’t already half in love with her then he’d fall now, because*e she’s sitting at his kitchen table like she’s never belonged anywhere else, her hair messed up and falling in tangled curls against his shirt, the blue setting off the halo of gold and sunset and peach that frames her face, and he’s seen her in gorgeous thirties pin curls and elaborate prom dresses and too many red carpet gowns to keep track of, and she’s never looked better.

After a while, Lily squirms a little. “What?” she asks, twisting her lips together. ”Have I got something in my –“

“You’re beautiful,” James tells her, because he’s spent too long not saying it, because the early sunlight after two weeks of rain looks particularly lovely against her cheeks, because he wants her to know.

Lily’s eyes soften. “James.”

Now it’s James’s turn to squirm, shrugging under her stare and trying to inject a modicum of nonchalance into his tone. “What?”

She smiles, then, and reaches out on some impulse to run her fingers over his, lightly, before sitting back in her chair. They resume their breakfast with a kind of promise hanging between them, cemented by her bare toes digging against his ankle. James has to remind himself to breathe in and out, has to force himself to eat and drink and not just _stare_ at her, because they’re not supposed to get this, after everything, and life isn’t a movie, and it’s not _supposed to get this kind of perfect._

                                                                                                   *

They head out a few hours later, and out of some unspoken agreement Lily puts on a huge pair of shades and he takes a baseball cap; whatever _this_ is, they’re not ready for it to get splashed across the gossip sites yet.

Lily suggests a flea market close to her old apartment, and the air is cool enough that they decided to walk, their knuckles occasionally skimming against each other, the brief moments of contact enough to send shock waves running down James’s spine. She talks non-stop as soon as they reach the flea market, trying on hats and flicking through old magazines and cooing over vintage jewellery, her face bright and voice animated.

James, feeling slightly out of his depth and unsure of the etiquette – should he talk to the stall owners? Ask before touching anything? Is haggling still a thing? – is happy to follow Lily’s lead, simply standing back and watching as she enjoys herself. It’s not so bad, really, all things considered; he thinks he’d watch her read the dictionary and still find new things to notice about her, like the way the way she always smiles with the right corner of her mouth first, or the way her eyes sometimes look blue and then suddenly seem grey, a becalmed sea one minute and the wildest storm the next. James doesn’t know when he started dealing exclusively in water-based metaphors, but he thinks it’s fitting; she’s an ocean, and if he’s being honest with himself then he started drowning in her years ago.

And then she holds up a Cole Porter album, her face creased with mischief, and he didn’t think it was possible to fall this hard, this quickly, but already she’s taken up more room in his heart than he ever knew he had space for.

“Hilarious,” he tells her, taking a few steps towards her and letting his hand rest on her hips. “You’re the first person to _ever_ make that joke.”

She rolls her eyes, then digs in her pockets for her phone. “Here,” she tells him, handing it over. “Take a pic!”

“Why…”

“Just do it,” Lily tells him through clenched teeth, holding up the Porter album and smiling widely, two dimples forming in her cheeks. James smiles, feeling his heart jump slightly as he tries to get the camera to focus. 

“Say cheese!”

 “I will not.”

James rolls his eyes, handing the phone back to her. “There,” he says, leaning in to watch her open twitter. “…What….are you doing?”

Lily shushes him, biting her lip with a slightly mischievous look in her eyes. _Flea marketing with the handsome Mr. Porter,_ she types, and hits ‘upload’. James whistles quietly, fighting hard to keep a straight face.

“A little evil,” he tells her, and she laughs.

“I know. Come on, I want a smoothie.”

*

By the time James thinks to check his phone, they’ve finished two smoothies each and are starting to draw long-suffering stares from the servers who seem impatient to clear their table. His stomach lurches slightly when he sees his inbox; ten new messages, as well as a pop-up that tells him he’s got a few hundred notifications to scroll through.

“You’ve made everyone jumpy,” he informs Lily, showing her his Twitter feed; at least seventy percent of his replies are simply a link to her photo and an outpouring of unintelligible excitement.

Lily laughs quietly, reaching out to run her fingers across his palm. “Leave it,” she tells him, mirth colouring her voice. “Let them wonder. _We_ know.”

He understands then, and the realisation hits him with a funny kind of jolt; weeks from now, months, _years_ maybe, they’ll be able to look back and find the picture of Lily grinning with a Cole Porter album and know, that was it. The first day of this… _them_.

“Okay,” he nods, smiling softly when Lily raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, we’ll know.”

He doesn’t bother replying to any of his texts at that moment, either; at least half of them are just a string of question marks and emoticons sent from Audrey, anyway, and he doesn’t think he could  muster up the energy to formulate an honest reply right now. Besides. They’ve had six lifetimes’ worth of falling in love for the cameras, of every word and touch and kiss being recorded and decided for them by someone else. It’s freeing, somehow, to know that no one’s written the script for them today; James doesn’t want to let anyone else in just yet.

*

“Where do you wanna go next?!” Lily asks him as they make their way outside; somehow, it’s late afternoon already, the flea market is closing up and the sky is starting to look a little darker, though that might just be another cloud moving in.

James shrugs, making a concerted effort to keep his voice casual as he says, “I figured we could, maybe, head back to mine?” When Lily doesn’t say anything, he rushes on. “Kind of early for dinner.”

“James _Porter_ ,” Lily cuts in, her eyes narrowing slightly. “It’s not even six yet. And you’re _hitting on_ me?”

She’s suddenly standing very close to him; James meets her eyes, and finds himself drawn in, somehow, like there’s a magnet hiding behind her lips that’s pulling him closer. He smiles, leaning in to tuck a stray curl of hair behind her ear.

“That depends,” James admits, ducking his head slightly so she won’t catch his blush. “We could watch a movie.”

“We could,” Lily nods, smiling a little when he lets his hand curl around the small of her back, bringing their bodies flush together.

“Or…” James leans closer, letting his lips graze against her ear. “Not watch it.”

“I’ve heard worse ideas…” Lily murmurs, voice hitching slightly; when she turns her head to look at him, their lips are suddenly all-but touching, and James can feel his stomach tighten with something like anticipation –

Until a clap of thunder startles them both, and rain starts falling around them in fast, heavy drops. Lily shrieks, laughing loudly and pulling James’s arms around her like she’s trying to shelter from the rain; they’re both soaked within seconds, his hair sticking to his forehead and hers clinging to the back of her neck.

 When she looks up at him again, there’s a definite shift in the air between them; and they both start shaking their heads, James smiling ruefully and Lily rolling her eyes.

“We are _not,_ ” she tells him, running her hand down his arm and lacing her fingers through his.

“Agreed,” James nods; and then he tugs on her hand, pulling her along as he starts back towards his apartment. “Let’s get inside.”

***

**II.**

When the phone starts ringing just as he’s got in the shower, James groans. It’s been one of those days; first he’d run out of milk for his cereal, with no time to run to the store before work, then they’d had a lighting problem that held up the whole crew for three hours while he and the other actors huddled next to the three electric heaters that had been brought out to keep them warm, and to top it all of he’d got lost on the drive back to his rented house and ended up driving around aimlessly for 45 minutes. Now he’s back, ready to shower the whole day off, eat something quick and comforting, and watch mindless TV for a few hours; but the phone’s ringing.

Slinging a towel around his hips, James starts down the hallway to where his phone is lying on the kitchen table, ringing shrilly. It’s strange, how he’s been here for two months and the strange, un-lived-in feel of the place is still unsettling; sometimes, James feels like he’s acting for the cameras. It’s something about the way the house is decorated, maybe; it feels fake, like a badly-designed film set, or a doll’s house.

He fumbles around with the phone for a moment, almost hanging up by accident and nearly dropping it to the floor when it slips out of his still-wet fingers - cursing under his breath, James holds the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Lily says, laughing a little, and it’s almost _embarrassing_ how quickly James starts to smile. “Bad time?”

“Just got in the shower,” he admits, sinking down onto a chair and quickly drying his free hand on the towel. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, just wanted to say hi… How’s England?”

“Cold,” James tells her, grimacing when he hears her laugh. “And it’s rained every day for, like, three weeks now.”

“Oh, you poor, spoiled California boy,” Lily teases, and James smiles unwillingly. “Should I call your agent, get her to pull you out?”

James laughs. “No, I think I can deal,” he says, and he can almost _hear_ her rolling her eyes.

“How brave,” she tells him, slightly archly. “You know, I bet there are hundreds of actors who’d _kill_ to sit in the rain for three weeks. In _England._ ”

“Hey, I’m not complaining!”

“Yes, you _are._ ”

“Okay, okay, sorry…” James laughs; when he hears her let out an exasperated sigh at his tone, the warmth goes through him like melting butter. It’s strange, how suddenly all the micro-aggressions of today seem to have fallen off his shoulders.

“Only another month,” she tells him, softer now. “That’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad,” James echoes, smiling giddily at the thought; one more month and he’ll be home. “I miss you.”

For a full five seconds, he thinks he’s made a mistake; sure, they’ve been going strong for over a year now, she keeps a toothbrush and a drawer full of clothes at his place and he has the keys to her apartment so he can feed her cat when she’s on location, and just before he flew out to England they took the plunge and went public, but –

He still doesn’t quite know what he’s done to deserve her; maybe that’s what this is, fear that she’s about to change her mind, because why wouldn’t she?

“I miss you too,” Lily says then, her voice soft and low, and a strange kind of relief washes over James, because she’s still there, because she misses him, because they’ve made it this far and there’s really no _reason_ for him to have these thoughts, equal parts self-doubt and disbelief.

They hang up soon after that, because Lily’s got a roast cooking in the oven and James really does need to get back in the shower, but before he goes to sleep he sends her a good night text, and laughs when she sends him a picture of Leo DiCaprio on her TV screen. **You’ve been replaced, sorry, stay in England.**

*

He finishes the movie four weeks later, and the wrap party is one of the _noisiest_ he’s been to in years; suddenly, all his business-like co-workers and scarily-efficient camera operators are downing pints of beer like they’re soda, and the music is loud and fast, and everyone’s smoking – it’s disorientating and it makes him a little homesick, suddenly, for sunshine and bottled water and health foods.

And then, early the next morning – he’s packing up his house into three suitcases and sending everything he can’t take with him to a thrift store down the road  – there’s a loud knock, unusual if only because he has a doorbell.

Mystified, he sets down the sweater he was debating over throwing out or taking home, and goes to open the door.

The sight of Lily standing there, looking tired and entirely out of place and entirely _wonderful_ , is enough to make James seriously doubt his sanity for a moment.

“Am I dreaming this?” he settles on eventually, eyes wide; Lily laughs, tilting her head to one side and smiling up at him.

“Surprise,” she says, slightly breathless; she’s laden down with a backpack and a handbag and an umbrella, which she waves a little awkwardly. “See, I came prepared, but it’s not even raining, I think you just lied to me to make me feel bad for you-“

James steps forwards, cupping her face in his hands and pressing his lips against hers. She’s surprised, and goes rigid for a moment, like she’s forgotten how they fit together; but then her bags go crashing to their feet, and she curls her arms around him, pulling him close. They kiss for what might have been hours but could be days, lips moving together in quick, exploratory motions, learning the shape of each other all over again, and he’s got one hand in hair, absent-mindedly combing through the soft waves that frame her face – they’re both reluctant to pull away, and when they finally do stop to breathe, their foreheads press together and they stand like that for a few long heartbeats, breathing each other in.

“God,” Lily says then, hiccupping over a small, happy laugh. “I needed that.”

“Glad to know this is all physical to you,” James huffs, pulling back to glare at her, though the effect is slightly ruined by the smile that’s threatening to take over his whole face. “You’ve got your fix now, so I guess you can go.”

“ _Obviously,_ ” Lily rolls her eyes, then picks up her handbag and nudges her backpack towards him with the toes of her boot. “Here, take this.”

James considers arguing; but she’s already pushed past him and stalked inside the house like she’s been here all along, and he’s so happy to have her here that he thinks he might burst.

*

He moves his flight back by a week, and spends a few hours calling everyone in LA who he’s made plans with; by the time SIrius is done crooning _Could It Be Love_ at him down the phone, Lily has made herself at home in the kitchen, throwing together something pasta-based and delicious. 

They wind up kissing again after lunch, breathless and urgent, ending up half-sprawled across each other on the couch. He’s missed her, and she’s _here;_ what else are they supposed to do? She pulls back before things get too heated, though, pushing him firmly back when he starts kissing along her jaw.

“James. _James,_ ” Lily half-laughs, eyes flying open when his hands creep up and under her shirt. “Stop, stop, I want –“

“I want _you,_ ” he tells her, not missing the way she seems to shiver under his touch at the words. “Lil…”

“I’m in _England_ for the first time _ever,_ ” she tells him firmly, standing up with what seems like a great amount of self-control. “We’re not spending the whole week on your _couch_.”

“Not…the whole week…”

“ _James._ ”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, lying back on the couch and smiling up at her. “What do you want to do?”

“ _Everything,_ ” Lily tells him, eyes bright. “London! We’re close, right?”

“Half an hour on the train.”

“The _train,_ ” Lily squeals, clapping her hands together. “Oh my god, how _quaint._ ”

“They have trains in the States, you know.”

“Shut up. Don’t spoil my moment.”

*

A few hours later, they’re strolling along the Embankment. Lily’s eating a strawberry ice cream, stopping in front of every street performer and living statue and magician to watch for a few minutes and drop a few coins into their baskets, taking photos of the London Eye and the Westminster buildings across the water and the skate park filled with kids in baggy jeans and tattoos. James tries, a few times, to gently suggest that they sit down and eat something, she must be tired after catching an overnight plane, there’s something about her hyperactivity that seems unsustainable; but she just shakes her head, and decides that they absolutely _have_ to walk up to the Globe Theatre and see if they can get tickets for a show.

James doesn’t _mind,_ exactly; it’s fun and somehow refreshing, seeing all the tourist spots through her eyes. He’s been here for three months, and never quite made time to see a lot of London – Lily stares at him with something like horror when he admits to not actually having been inside the National Gallery yet – and it’s a nice change of pace from constantly working, just walking along the Thames with her, constantly finding new things to stop and wonder at.

He keeps finding excuses to touch her; a hand on the small of her back as they cross a busy street, his fingers brushing along the outlines of her lips when she asks him if she’s got ice cream on her face, his leg pressed against hers when they take a sightseeing bus tour up around Buckingham Palace. It’s addictive, and he doesn’t know how he made it this long without her, but now he gets to make up for lost time; and she’s doing the same thing, resting her head on his shoulder, her fingers painting tiny concentric circles against his knee.

It’s almost funny, how much he’s enjoying re-learning the shape of her presence next to his; how much light seems to spill from her skin at every touch.

They get their show tickets – _Titus Andronicus,_ which Lily claims to love; James drily asks her if he should be worried – for the following Saturday, and then make their way back towards Waterloo, stopping on the way to pick up some hilariously-overpriced gluten-free bread and red wine. He doesn’t want to eat out after three months of weirdly coloured canteen fare, and she’s just got off a twelve-hour flight; they end up crashing in front of the TV with the wine practically untouched. Lily’s the first to fall asleep, unsurprisingly, and James turns down the volume of an old episode of _Friends,_ pulls the covers around her waist, and lets his fingers card through the ends of her hair, listening to her snuffled breaths and watching as some dream plays across her eyelids.

He falls asleep soon after, the warmth of her body pressed against his not so much a distraction as a sense of being home, finally, three months after arriving.

*

She drives him home to his apartment from LAX, chattering loudly and laughing when James has a momentary panic attack when she pulls out into the right side of the road.

“Three months, and you’ve reformed,” she teases. “Gonna start taking afternoon tea, now, too?”

“You’re one to talk,” James huffs. “With your sudden Austen obsession. You do know we don’t _have_ any Regency ballrooms here, right?”

“A girl can dream,” Lily half-sings, and he has to laugh; they’re both a little delirious from the long flight. “That, or get cast in a period drama. Hey, we should do an Austen next!”

“Sure, I’ll just call my agent and ask for all those Austen scripts she’s been trying to send me for years…"

“Great plan, send them along to me too, yeah?”

They bicker about scripts and period dramas for a good half an hour; Lily is clearly taken with the idea in that bright and surprisingly romantic way she gets sometimes – James has learnt to see past the eye-rolling and the attempted jaded personality she puts on so much – and he’s just happy to listen to her ramble, leaning his head against the car door and soaking up the sun.

It’s almost a surprise when she pulls up outside his building; after six days of uninterrupted _Lily,_ he doesn’t quite want to say goodbye.

“You want a hand carrying your stuff up?” Lily asks, turning off the ignition and opening her door already.

“Why don’t you come up for a while,” James suggests; his heart is suddenly thudding with exhilarated nerves. He’s had an _idea._

“I shouldn’t…” Lily pulls a face. “Sorry. Really want to shower off that flight, and get a laundry going, I didn’t even change my sheets before I left, it was kind of a last-minute decision to go – “

“You could do laundry here,” James says, forcing his tone into something approaching _casual._ “And stay over, if you want.”

“Not ready to be on your own again?” Lily teases, though her eyes soften slightly when he nods. “ _James_.”

“Or…” he swallows down a nervous cough, and walks around to where she’s standing on the kerb.

Lily stares at him a little bemusedly when he takes both her hands in his. “What, are we having a moment?” she asks, rolling her eyes a little. “I’m too tired to have a moment, James, can it wait, I –“

“Stay,” he tells her again, rushing over the word so it’s hardly intelligible. _“_ Lily. _Stay._ I want – you could – I mean, we practically stay over each other’s places every night, anyway, and I like having you there in the mornings and I know you like it when we cook together, and I mean it’s not like we’re just starting out any more, I’m –“

“James,” Lily cuts in, eyes wide now. “What… What are you saying?”

“Move in with me,” he says then, slowly, trying out the way the words feel on his tongue; he hears her sharp intake of breath, and forces himself to look directly at her. “That’s what I’m saying.”

She stares at him for a moment longer, and in those few heart-sickeningly stretched out seconds James has time to reconsider every mistake he’s ever made; has time to stop and think, _shit._

And then she’s kissing him, her lips dry from the flight and her hands still sticky from when he spilled a can of coke during landing, and they’ve both been awake for too many hours to really be coherent right now, but it doesn’t _matter,_ nothing matters when she’s kissing him like this, full of sunshine and laughter and promises.

“Okay,” she murmurs, pulling back just enough to lean her forehead against his, and he has to swallow back a sort of deliriously happy hiccup at the way her lips curl into a smile; he doesn’t know what to do with this much _feeling_ in his heart for this tiny, beautiful wildfire, stardust and strawberries and a sharp wit poured into the shape of a girl.

“Yeah?” he asks, slowly, like he can’t quite believe what’s happening, here on the dusty sidewalk in front of the apartment he always thought was too big for him.

“Yeah,” she says, and then she’s kissing him again; the sun is warm on James’s neck, but that’s _nothing_ to the heat that seems to seep from her fingertips into every inch of his skin.

***

**III.**

They leave the clinic in silence, holding hands because it feels like _the thing to do_ but hardly looking at each other; James stares up at the sky, and Lily watches her feet as they walk, and neither of them say a word.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to her; it’s that he doesn’t know where to _start_. Anything he might say feels contrived when tests it out in his mind, like a line from a badly-written daytime drama; he doesn’t have the vocabulary for this, doesn’t know how to put something this big into words.

They turn the corner into a quiet side street, and with a few mumbled words between them manage to settle on a deserted-looking coffee shop. James gets the drinks, Lily chooses a table, and then they sit. Stirring their coffees in silence.

Finally, it’s Lily who speaks up. “We were always going to talk about it someday,” she says quietly, without looking up; James isn’t prepared for the way her words send his mind spinning into overdrive, and any half-formed convictions about _taking things slow_ and _not getting ahead of himself_ go flying out of the window along with every last shred of doubt that he wants this, that if it were up to him - which it is _not,_ he knows that, he knows he doesn’t really get a vote – then there wouldn’t be a decision to make.

“Someday isn’t _right now,_ ” he says cautiously, unsure of how much he should give away. “And it’s… We don’t… You don’t…”

Lily rolls her eyes. “Spit it out.”

James has to force himself to take a deep breath. “I want whatever you want,” he says, not without some difficulty. “But it’s okay if you want to take some time. I know it’s a lot.”

“A _lot._ ”

“I didn’t mean –“

“James, I just signed on to the new Nicholls adaptation. If it takes, that’s a _trilogy._ Three movies. With really good people. And it’s not like I can just drop out after the first one and no one will mind, or even – I don’t even know when I’d start showing, if it would fall into shooting or just after, if I’m even allowed to ride horses or run or whatever, and – “ Lily’s taking quickly now, her hands flying erratically at her sides, like she’s trying really hard not to start yelling at him. He has to remind himself that it’s _probably_ not him she’s mad at.“And I’d have to take a year out, maybe longer, and it’s not like my body will just _bounce_ back like it’s nothing, and then I’ll forever get stuck in the quirky friend roles, or I’ll end up, like, the mom on some TV show that no one cares about, and I don’t –“ she clears her throat, and stares back down at her coffee. “I didn’t think it was time.”

“I know,” James says slowly, his heart now lurching sickeningly against his ribcage. He doesn’t know how to fix this. Maybe there _isn’t_ a way to fix this. “And – and you know you have options.”

“James, I’m thirty-seven,” Lily tells him, her voice heavy with a kind of resignation that sends a chill to his core. “It’s crazy that this even happened without trying.”

“Do you…” he clears his throat. “Would you have wanted to try? Later?”

Lily looks at him for the first time, then, her eyes burning with a kind of terrified conviction. “I think so,” she tells him quietly, and he has to clamp his lips together to stop from himself from gasping out loud. “Yeah. You?”

The fact that she even has to _ask_ him makes James want to laugh out loud. “ _Lil,_ ” he says, reaching out on impulse to run his thumb over hers. The gesture has become second-nature, something they just _do –_ equal parts reassurance and affection, comfort and unity. “Whatever you decide, I’m with you. But…yeah. Yeah, okay, I want this, I want – “ he swallows thickly, and smiles a slightly watery smile when she curls her fingers through his. “You’re – my family, already. I want this, but only… Only with you.”

A long pause follows his words; James can hear the blood roaring through his ears, and although she barely moves he feels like he’s aware at every second of Lily’s motions, breathing in and then out too quickly, the flicker of a thought darting across the bridge of her nose, the way her hand tightens in his.

“If anyone calls me fat on the internet,” she says eventually. “I want you to go after them with a gun.”

James doesn’t quite know how to react, at first; but then she’s _looking_ at him with a kind of wonder dancing in her eyes, and she looks as terrified as he feels but it’s okay, they’re okay, they’re going to do this together –

_They’re really doing this._

He reaches out on impulse to run his fingers along her chin; Lily closes her eyes at the motions, and breathes out shakily, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. James’s own eyes have been wet for what feels like hours, and soon they’re both laughing giddily, feeling a little ridiculous sat here in this old coffee house and crying into their drinks.

James gets up and comes to sit beside her, and she leans into him on instinct; almost without realising it, he lets one hand rest against her stomach, his thumb sliding under the material of her t-shirt and stroking gently across her skin. Lily gasps quietly at the touch, and then giggles when he lets his fingers tickle gently over her ribs.

“Idiot,” she tells him, her eyes still brimming. “Way to ruin the moment.”

“I love you,” James replies simply, and there’s the truth of it; he wonders, sometimes, how he could ever let a _day_ pass without telling her.

*

It’s started to rain by the time they start walking home; Lily groans and hunts for an umbrella – which she doesn’t have, because who carries an _umbrella_ in LA, even in February?

James lends her his jacket, which doesn’t do much to hold off the rain but does keep her a little warmer; he’s filled with a sudden _protective_ urge, like he wants to carry her everywhere and make sure she’s eating all the right leafy vegetables and monitor her blood pressure. Giving her a jacket seems like a good start.

“Harry,” Lily says suddenly, already laughing at her own joke, “Oh my god, _Harry._ ”

“Do _not,_ ” James tells her severely. “Make jokes about that.”

“Harry Porter,” Lily giggles. “Poor kid.”

“Harry James,” he throws in, laughing now, too; they’ve been laughing intermittently now for so long that he thinks he’s forgotten how not to be happy. “Please, if you’re going to do that to him then at least follow through with it.”

“We don’t know it’ll _be_ a him,” Lily points out, not unreasonably; then her face lights up. “Oh my god. _Anne._ ”

“Anne-with-an-E of Los Angeles,” James grins, pulling her to a stop by one hand and letting his fingers tug on one of the wet strands of hair clinging to her cheeks. “With any luck, she’ll have your colouring.”-

“I’ll dye it,” Lily vows, giggling somewhat inanely again; she smiles against his lips when he kisses her, rainwater and residual happy tears mixing on their cheeks, and for a moment James thinks wildly that if it doesn’t rain on the day they get married then something will have gone seriously wrong somewhere –

And then he thinks about how they’ll have to look for a bigger apartment and start decorating a room for a nursery, and _oh god_ he’s going to have to call his parents, he’s going to have to tell _Sirius_ and Audrey and _how about the entire internet –_

And James thinks about how stupid he was, to think he could _ever_ hate her; and how stubborn, to convince himself that he could get over _whatever_ _it was_ back then; and how _god damn_ lucky, to somehow get her showing up at his door and singing at him in the rain after six years of pushing him away –

And then Lily’s arms are snaking around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, and he doesn’t think about anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND WE'RE DONE. What a crazy week it's been, y'all. 27k words. That's more than half a NaNo. I've never reached the halfway point in NaNo without giving up. I don't understand where the energy for this fic came from, tbh, but I'm glad! And thanks if you read along. Means a lot. 
> 
> A QUICK NOTE - Lily is 37 in the last scene because I imagine they've been together about four or five years, and I always thought she was probably around 24/25 when she started on 'Wait for It'. 
> 
> Also the titles were all McFly lyrics I just wanted you all to know that.
> 
> Also I might end up revisiting James and Lily so if you want to send me prompts (on tumblr I'm bringyouhometoo) then go for it!
> 
> Also I am probably going to write something for Audrey and Henry, but again....probably not until after episode 5.


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